Abstract
Background
Anti-Müllerian hormone (Amh) plays a critical role in both early sex determination and later gonad development in vertebrate species. However, it remains unknown in northern snakehead (Channa argus), which is economically important freshwater fish with sexual dimorphism.
Objective
This study aimed to identify the expression profiles and estrogenic regulation of CaAmh during gonadal sex differentiation in C. argus.
Methods
The cDNA and genomic DNA sequences of CaAmh were identified by PCR and RACE techniques. The expression patterns of CaAmh were detected by qRT-PCR during the gonadal sex differentiation and after 17α-ethinyloestradiol (EE2) treatments.
Results
CaAmh is composed of seven exons and six introns, and its full-length cDNA is 2413 bp in length, with 1635 bp open reading frame (ORF) that encodes a 544 amino acid protein. Tissues expression patterns revealed that CaAmh display the highest expression in testis of XY males (40.36 folds, p < 0.01). The spatio-temporal expression patterns during gonadal sex differentiation indicated that CaAmh expression differed between XX females and XY males at 30 day after hatching (dah), and reached to the peak (36.03 folds, p < 0.01) at 90 dah in XY gonads. However, CaAmh expression in XX gonads remained low throughout the sampling period. Furthermore, CaAmh expression in the gonads (ovaries) of the sex-reversed XY fish (XY-F) by the administration of estrogen EE2 was downregulated to low level, similar to that in ovaries of normal XX females (XX-F).
Conclusions
These results show that Amh plays a critical role in testicular differentiation of C. argus and it is apparently modulated by estrogens in this species.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS (Grant number 2017HY-ZC0404), China Agriculture Research System (Grant number CARS-46), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 31902351), the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund, CAFS (Grant number 2020TD34), the Pearl River S&T Nova Program of Guangzhou (no. 201710010174) and National Key R&D Program of China (Grant number 2018YFD0901201).
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Supplementary file1 Fig. S1. Nucleotide and putative amino sequences of CaAmh. The sequences numbers of nucleotide (lower row) and putative amino acid (upper row) are shown on the left. The translation initiation codon (ATG), stop codons (TAA) are in bold and red. The motif associated mRNA instability (ATTTA) is shown as double underscore, and poly-adenylation signal sequence (AATAA) is shown as wavy line. The signal peptide is showd as underscore. The AMH-N terminal is marked with green background, and TGF-β domain is highlighted in green background. Fig. S2. Multiple alignments of CaAmh with Amh proteins from various species. The amino acid sequences of Amhs from typical organisms were aligned using the ClustalW 2.1 program. The black shade represent 100% identity, dark gray represented 80% identity, and TGF-β domain is marked in red box. Fig. S3. Phylogenetic relationship between the Amh proteins in different species. A neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA 5.0 software. The bootstrap values of the branches were obtained by testing the tree 1000 times and values were over 50% percent marked. The GenBank accession numbers of Amh proteins are given in Table 2 (PDF 474 kb)
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Luo, Q., Ou, M., Zhao, J. et al. Expression profile and estrogenic regulation of Amh during gonadal sex differentiation in northern snakehead (Channa argus). Genes Genom 42, 827–835 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-020-00943-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-020-00943-7