Fish Germ Cells and Gonad Development

A special issue of Fishes (ISSN 2410-3888). This special issue belongs to the section "Genetics and Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 4488

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Integrated Rice-Fish Farming, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai 201306, China
Interests: fish germ cells; fish stem cells; cell transplantation; fish sex determination and differentiation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
The Key Laboratory of Experimental Marine Biology, Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 7 Nanhai Road, Qingdao 266071, China
Interests: germ cells cryo-preservation; germ cells development; germ cells transplantation
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology, Shantou University, 243 Daxue Road, Shantou 515063, China
Interests: primordial germ cell; sex dimorphism; sex determination and differentiation; gene editing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Germ cells produce gametes that transmit genetic information to the next generation. They originate from primordial germ cells, which are set aside from somatic cells in the early stage of embryo development and migrate to the gonads where they differentiate into sperm in males and oocyte in females. Dozens of genes are required for germ cells development, and the mutation of any important genes such as dnd and piwi will leads to infertility. Fish are the most diverse group of all vertebrates, with more than 32,000 species recorded—half the number of vertebrates on earth. Fish provide us with a large amount of protein, thus understanding their germ cell development and reproduction is of great significance to aquaculture. With the development of biotechnology, fish reproductive biology and its application have developed rapidly. This Special Issue will collect selected contributions on progress related to the germ cells and gonad development of fish.

Prof. Dr. Mingyou Li
Prof. Dr. Qinghua Liu
Dr. Fan Lin
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • germ cells /gonad development
  • sex determination and sex differentiation
  • germ cells culture
  • interaction between germ cells and somatic cells
  • sex-controlled breeding
  • germ cells transplantation/surrogate breeding

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 2629 KiB  
Article
Identification and Characterization of microRNAs in the Gonads of Litopenaeus vannamei Using High-Throughput Sequencing
by Wei Li, Pingping He, Xingzhi Zhang, Junliang Guan, Yongxian Chen, Li Zhang, Bin Zhang, Yusi Zheng, Xin Li, Qingsong He, Longcheng Liu, Chang Yuan, Pinyuan Wei and Jinxia Peng
Fishes 2022, 7(6), 308; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes7060308 - 27 Oct 2022
Viewed by 1758
Abstract
Although the expression of miRNAs has been widely applied to investigate on gonads, the role of miRNAs in the gonadal development of white Pacific shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) remains unknown. In this study, we performed high-throughput sequencing to identify the sex-related microRNAs [...] Read more.
Although the expression of miRNAs has been widely applied to investigate on gonads, the role of miRNAs in the gonadal development of white Pacific shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) remains unknown. In this study, we performed high-throughput sequencing to identify the sex-related microRNAs (miRNAs) that elucidated the regulatory mechanisms on the gonadal differentiation of L. vannamei. We obtained a total of 29,671,557 and 28,526,942 raw reads from the ovaries and testes library, respectively. We then mapped 26,365,828 (92.73%) of the ovarian clean sequences and 23,694,294 (85.65%) of the testicular clean sequences for a transcriptome reference sequence of L. vannamei. After blasting the miRNA sequences against the miRBase database, we identified 153 significantly differentially expressed miRNAs between the ovaries and testes. To confirm the high-throughput sequencing results, we used a reverse transcriptase–quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to verify the expression patterns of the seven most differentially expressed miRNAs (i.e., novel_mir23, miR-92b-3p_3, miR-12-5p_2, novel_mir67, miR-279_1, let-7-5p_6, miR-263a-5p_1). According to the results of RT-qPCR, most of the miRNAs were expressed consistently with the high-throughput sequencing results. In addition, the target genes significantly enriched several Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome (KEGG) pathways that were closely related to gonadal differentiation and development, including extracellular matrix–receptor interaction, Hedgehog signaling pathway, protein digestion and absorption and cell adhesion molecules (CAMs). This study revealed the first miRNAs sequencing of L. vannamei gonads. We identified sex-related differentially expressed miRNAs and KEGG pathways, which will be helpful to facilitate future research into the regulatory mechanism on the gonadal differentiation of L. vannamei. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fish Germ Cells and Gonad Development)
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16 pages, 5966 KiB  
Article
Identification and Characterization of PIWI-Interacting RNAs in Spinyhead Croakers (Collichthys lucidus) by Small RNA Sequencing
by Qun Ji, Zhengli Xie, Wu Gan, Lumin Wang and Wei Song
Fishes 2022, 7(5), 297; https://doi.org/10.3390/fishes7050297 - 20 Oct 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1891
Abstract
PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are an emerging class of small RNAs which protect the animal germline genome against deleterious transposable elements. Nevertheless, the characteristics and sex-related expression patterns of piRNA in Collichthys lucidus remain unknown. In this study, we first performed systematic next-generation high-throughput [...] Read more.
PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are an emerging class of small RNAs which protect the animal germline genome against deleterious transposable elements. Nevertheless, the characteristics and sex-related expression patterns of piRNA in Collichthys lucidus remain unknown. In this study, we first performed systematic next-generation high-throughput sequencing in C. lucidus ovaries and testes. We identified 3,027,834 piRNAs across six gonad libraries. Of these, 2225 piRNAs were differently expressed between testes and ovaries; 1195 were upregulated and 1030 downregulated in the testes. Interestingly, the potential target genes of 208 differentially expressed piRNAs had sex-related functions, including germ cell development, gonad development, ovarian follicle development, gamete generation, spermatid development, and spermatogenesis. Moreover, these target genes are involved in the TGF-β, Wnt, MAPK, mTOR, VEGF, and PI3K-Akt pathways. Further, 10 piRNAs were derived from Nectin2 and Mea1, which play important roles in sexual reproduction, male gamete generation, and germ cell development. We also identified 5482 piRNA clusters across the gonads, among which 139 piRNA clusters were uniquely expressed in the testes and 98 in the ovaries. The expression of core sex-related piRNA was validated by real-time PCR. Overall, our findings provide significant insights into C. lucidus’ sex-related piRNAs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fish Germ Cells and Gonad Development)
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