Functional genomics in fish reproduction: towards understanding the sex differentiation process

• Main Authors: Ribas, Laia, Valdivieso, Alejandro, Sánchez Baizán, Núria, Piferrer, Francesc
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: Asociación Ibérica de Endocrinología Comparada 2017
• Subjects: Scophthalmus maximus; Turbot
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/179377

10 Congress of Iberian Association for Comparative Endocrinology : 10º Congreso de la Asociación Ibérica de Endocrinología Comparada (AIEC) : 10º Congresso da Associação Ibérica de Endocrinologia Comparativa (AIEC), 13-15 July 2017, Vigo, Spain.-- 1 page Fish exhibit different types of reproduction in which gonads show sexual plasticity. Fish sex determining mechanisms and sex differentiation processes can be modulated by the influence of the environment where they live. Thus, external factors such as temperature or rearing density are known to influence the final sex ratios in some fish populations. However, the molecular mechanisms in which a bipotential gonad differentiates towards an ovary or a testis are not well understood. Thus, functional genomic strategies can help researchers in this field to decipher the complexity of molecular processes in which the final sex of an organism is determined. Here, we report our work carried out in two fish species with important commercial interests, the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and the turbot (Scophthalmus maximus), and the work developed in a fish model species, the zebrafish (Danio rerio). In this presentation, we summarize the results of different types of experiments in our laboratory using these fish species in which we identify different transcriptomic profiles based on gene expression and molecular pathway analysis along gonadal development. We focus not only in the analysis of canonical genes related to the endocrinology of testis and ovarian differentiation, but also consider genes related to the stress response and to epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. Next, we compare the molecular common and species-specific patterns found among the sex differentiation processes in these fish species, describing the influences of temperature during early periods of development. Further, we show how temperature and density factors are able to modulate the final sex ratio in zebrafish demonstrating that sex ratio response to elevated temperature is ...