The Chinese mitten crab (Eriocheir sinensis) is an economically important aquaculture species in China, with distinct differences in ovarian maturation status between crabs fed with natural diets and artificial diets during the listing period, thus, leading to selling price differentiation. Our previous study showed that dietary supplementation with 100 mg/kg icariin can effectively promote ovarian development of E. sinensis. However, the internal molecular mechanism has not yet been elucidated because of a lack of comprehensive genome sequence information. We compared the ovary transcriptomes of E. sinensis fed with two diets containing 0 and 100 mg/kg ICA using the BGISEQ-500 platform. This yielded 12.54 Gb clean bases and 54,794 unigenes, 13,832 of which were found to be differentially expressed after icariin exposure. Twenty pathways closely related to gonadal development were selected through KEGG analysis. Seven differentially expressed genes relevant to vitellogenesis and oocyte maturation (serine/threonine-protein kinase mos-like, Eg2, cytoplasmic polyadenylation element-binding protein, cyclin B, vitellogenin 1, cathepsin D, and juvenile hormone esterase-like carboxylesterase 1) were validated by qRT-PCR, and four proteins (MEK1/2, ERK1/2, Cyclin B and Cdc2) associated with the progesterone mediated oocyte maturation pathway (i.e., MAPK/MPF pathway) were analyzed by western-blot. The results showed that icariin could promote the synthesis, processing and deposition of vitellogenin in oocytes, and that it also has the potential to promote oocyte maturation (resumption of Meiosis I) by altering the expression of the relevant genes and proteins.

中华绒螯蟹（Eriocheir sinensis）是我国重要的经济水产养殖品种，上市期间天然饲料和人工饲料喂养的螃蟹卵巢成熟状态存在明显差异，导致销售价格差异化。我们之前的研究表明，饮食中添加 100 mg/kg 淫羊藿苷可以有效促进E. sinensis 的卵巢发育。然而，由于缺乏全面的基因组序列信息，其内部分子机制尚未阐明。我们比较了E. sinensis的卵巢转录组使用 BGISEQ-500 平台喂食含有 0 和 100 mg/kg ICA 的两种饮食。这产生了 12.54 Gb 干净碱基和 54,794 个 unigenes，其中 13,832 个被发现在淫羊藿苷暴露后差异表达。通过KEGG分析筛选出20条与性腺发育密切相关的通路。验证了与卵黄生成和卵母细胞成熟相关的七个差异表达基因（丝氨酸/苏氨酸蛋白激酶 mos 样、Eg2、细胞质多腺苷酸化元件结合蛋白、细胞周期蛋白 B、卵黄蛋白原 1、组织蛋白酶 D 和保幼激素酯酶样羧酸酯酶 1）通过 qRT-PCR，并通过蛋白质印迹分析了与孕酮介导的卵母细胞成熟途径（即 MAPK/MPF 途径）相关的四种蛋白质（MEK1/2、ERK1/2、细胞周期蛋白 B 和 Cdc2）。结果表明淫羊藿苷能促进合成，