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Sexually dimorphic expression of foxl2 during gametogenesis in scallop Chlamys farreri, conserved with vertebrates

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Abstract

FOXL2 is a member of the forkhead box family, a transcription factor essential for the early regulation of ovarian development that is expressed in a sexually dimorphic manner in vertebrates. However, data on this gene in invertebrates are rare. In this study, we cloned a full-length cDNA sequence of foxl2 from the scallop Chlamys farreri, an important commercial mollusk in China. The cDNA sequence of Cf-foxl2 (C. farreri foxl2) has 1,824 bp with an open reading frame of 1,107 bp encoding 369 amino acid residues containing the conserved domain forkhead box. Semiquantitative RT-PCR showed that Cf-foxl2 was expressed mainly in the ovary. Using quantitative real-time PCR, we found that the highest expression was in the ovary of proliferative stage animals, about 62-fold higher than that in the testis and about twofold higher than that in the ovary of growing and mature stages. In situ hybridization revealed that Cf-foxl2 mRNA was located in the cytoplasm of follicle cells and germ cells in the ovary and testis except in the spermatozoa. Our data imply that Cf-foxl2 is expressed in a sexually dimorphic pattern at the RNA level, which is conserved with vertebrates.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Key Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province of China (Z2008D02), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30901097), and the Natural Science Foundation of Qingdao (11-2-4-1(10)-jch).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Marine Genetics and Breeding (Ocean University of China), Ministry of Education, Qingdao, 266003, People’s Republic of China

    Xiao-Ling Liu, Zhi-Feng Zhang, Ming-Yu Shao, Jian-Guo Liu & Faiz Muhammad

  2. College of life sciences, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, People’s Republic of China

    Xiao-Ling Liu

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  1. Xiao-Ling Liu
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  2. Zhi-Feng Zhang
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  3. Ming-Yu Shao
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  4. Jian-Guo Liu
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  5. Faiz Muhammad
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Correspondence to Zhi-Feng Zhang.

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Communicated by D. Weisblat

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Liu, XL., Zhang, ZF., Shao, MY. et al. Sexually dimorphic expression of foxl2 during gametogenesis in scallop Chlamys farreri, conserved with vertebrates. Dev Genes Evol 222, 279–286 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-012-0410-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00427-012-0410-z

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