Molecular approaches related to the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) reproductive process

• Main Author: Morini, Marina Ange Marie
• Other Authors: Asturiano Nemesio, Juan Francisco, Sánchez Peñaranda, David, Universitat Politècnica de València. Departamento de Ciencia Animal - Departament de Ciència Animal
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2016
• Subjects: hist; scipo; Anguilla anguilla; European eel
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/68513; http://hdl.handle.net/10251/68513

Tesis por compendio Compendio [EN] The European eel (Anguilla anguilla, L., 1758) population is in dramatic decline, so much so that this species has been listed as "Critically Endangered" on the Red List of Threatened Species, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The European eel has a complex life cycle, with sexual maturation blocked in the absence of the reproductive oceanic migration, and an inability to mature in captivity without the administration of hormonal treatments. Even though experimental maturation induces gamete production of both sexes, the fertilization results in infertile eggs, unviable embryos and larvae, which die within a few days of hatching. Therefore, understanding the eel reproductive physiology during maturation is very important if we want to recover the wild eel population. Furthermore, due to its phylogenetic position, representative of a basal group of teleosts, the Elopomorphs, the Anguilla species may provide insights into ancestral regulatory physiology processes of reproduction in teleosts, the largest group of vertebrates. In this thesis, characterization, phylogeny and synteny analyses have given us new insight into the evolutionary history of the reproductive process in vertebrates. The European eel possesses five membrane (mPRs) and two nuclear (nPR or pgrs) progestin receptors. Eel mPRs clustered in two major monophyletic groups. Phylogeny analysis of vertebrate nPRs and PLCz1 (sperm specific protein) places both eel PLCz1 and nPR sequences at the base of the teleost clade, which is consistent with the basal position of elopomorphs in the phylogeny of teleosts. To further resolve the origin of the duplicated eel nPRs, synteny analyses of the nPR neighboring genes in several vertebrate genomes were performed. Phylogeny and synteny analyses allowed us to propose the hypothesis that eel duplicated nPRs originated from the 3R. In order to gain a better understanding of the role of the genes implicated in eel reproduction, analyses of their ...