Characterization of the Dmrt1 gene in the black rockfish Sebastes schlegeli revealed a remarkable sex-dimorphic expression

A duplicated amh is the master sex-determining gene for Sebastes rockfish in the Northwest Pacific

Teleost fish are the most diverse group of vertebrates and provide opportunities to study the evolution of sex determination (SD) systems. Using genomic and functional analyses, we identified a male-specific duplication of anti-Müllerian hormone (amh) gene as the male master sex-determining (MSD) gene in Sebastes schlegelii. By resequencing 10 males and 10 females, we characterized a 5 kb-long fragment in HiC_Scaffold_12 as a male-specific region, which contained an amh gene (named amhy). We then demonstrated that amhy is a duplication of autosomal amh that was later translocated to the ancestral Y chromosome. amha and amhy shared high-nucleotide identity with the most significant difference being two insertions in intron 4 of amhy. Furthermore, amhy overexpression triggered female-to-male sex reversal in S. schlegelii, displaying its fundamental role in driving testis differentiation. We developed a PCR assay which successfully identified sexes in two species of northwest Pacific rockfish related to S. schlegelii. However, the PCR assay failed to distinguish the sexes in a separate clade of northeast Pacific rockfish. Our study provides new examples of amh as the MSD in fish and sheds light on the convergent evolution of amh duplication as the driving force of sex determination in different fish taxa.

Comparative Genomics Studies on the dmrt Gene Family in Fish

Doublesex and mab-3-related transcription factor (dmrt) genes are widely distributed across various biological groups and play critical roles in sex determination and neural development. Here, we applied bioinformatics methods to exam cross-species changes in the dmrt family members and evolutionary relationships of the dmrt genes based on genomes of 17 fish species. All the examined fish species have dmrt1-5 while only five species contained dmrt6. Most fish harbored two dmrt2 paralogs (dmrt2a and dmrt2b), with dmrt2b being unique to fish. In the phylogenetic tree, 147 DMRT are categorized into eight groups (DMRT1-DMRT8) and then clustered in three main groups. Selective evolutionary pressure analysis indicated purifying selections on dmrt1-3 genes and the dmrt1-3-2(2a) gene cluster. Similar genomic conservation patterns of the dmrt1-dmrt3-dmrt2(2a) gene cluster with 20-kb upstream/downstream regions in fish with various sex-determination systems were observed except for three regions with remarkable diversity. Synteny analysis revealed that dmrt1, dmrt2a, dmrt2b, and dmrt3-5 were relatively conserved in fish during the evolutionary process. While dmrt6 was lost in most species during evolution. The high conservation of the dmrt1-dmrt3-dmrt2(2a) gene cluster in various fish genomes suggests their crucial biological functions while various dmrt family members and sequences across fish species suggest different biological roles during evolution. This study provides a molecular basis for fish dmrt functional analysis and may serve as a reference for in-depth phylogenomics.

Characterisation of kisspeptin system genes in an ovoviviparous teleost: Sebastes schlegeli

Kisspeptins are neuropeptides that play important roles in the reproduction and the onset of puberty in vertebrate by activating their receptor, Kissr. In the present study, we first isolated kiss1 and kissr4 genes from an ovoviviparous fish, the black rockfish (Sebastes schlegeli) by homologue cloning. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the kiss and kissr of S. schlegeli belonged to kiss1 and kissr4 respectively. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis showed that the kissr4 was expressed mainly in the brain and testis, while the kiss1 was expressed predominantly in the heart of both sexes. As for the different gonadal maturation stages the kiss1 showed different expression patterns in different tissues. During the early development stage, expression levels of the ligand and receptor genes showed similar increasing trends. The promoter region of kissr4 contained several putative transcription factor (TF) binding sites which may have the function of regulating kisspeptin system gene expression, providing potential targets for future in-depth investigation. These results together confirmed that the kisspeptin system in S. schlegeli may be involved in reproduction and other activities. Furthermore, our study laid the groundwork for further learning about the evolution and function of kisspeptin system in fish even vertebrate.