| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
To reveal the mechanism of low water temperature-induced female sex reversal in fish, trascriptomic analysis was performed using gonadal mRNAs from normal (XX) and low temperature-induced sex reversed (XY) females. Ninety-nine genes (e.g., egfl6, capn1, calm1) were differentially expressed between the two groups during the sex determining period. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) to predict biological pathways that underwent changes based on observed gonadal gene expression revealed that the top-three differential canonical pathways were calcium, protein kinase A, and opioid signaling. Upstream regulator analysis, which predicts regulators that caused observed gene expression, revealed several interesting factors such as beta-estradiol, estrogen receptor 1, and transforming growth factor beta 1. The fact that estrogen and TGF-beta signaling were highlighted by IPA suggests that these pathways may play a key role in feminizing effects of cooler temperatures on XY-genotype fish.
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