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Identification of Sex-Specific Markers Reveals Male Heterogametic Sex Determination in Pseudobagrus ussuriensis

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Abstract

Comprehending sex determination mechanism is a first step for developing sex control breeding biotechnologies in fish. Pseudobagrus ussuriensis, one of bagrid catfishes in Bagridae, had been observed to have about threefold size dimorphism between males and females, but its sex determination mechanism had been unknown. In this study, we firstly used the amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP)-based screening approach to isolate a male-specific DNA fragment and thereby identified a 10,569 bp of male-specific sequence and a 10,365 bp of female-related sequence by genome walking in the bagrid catfish, in which a substantial genetic differentiation with 96.35 % nucleotide identity was revealed between them. Subsequently, a high differentiating region of 650 bp with only 70.26 % nucleotide identity was found from the corresponding two sequences, and three primer pairs of male-specific marker, male and female-shared marker with different length products in male and female genomes, and female-related marker were designed. Significantly, when these markers were used to identify genetic sex of the bagrid catfish, only male individuals was detected to amplify the male-specific marker fragment, and female-related marker was discovered to produce dosage association in females and in males. Our current data provide significant genetic evidence that P. ussuriensis has heterogametic XY sex chromosomes in males and homogametic XX sex chromosomes in females. Therefore, sex determination mechanism of P. ussuriensis is male heterogametic XX/XY system.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (2010CB126301), the Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX3-EW-N-04), and the Autonomous Project of the State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology (2011FBZ17).

Conflict of Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Zheng-Jun Pan, Xi-Yin Li & Jian-Fang Gui

  2. School of Life Science, Huaiyin Normal University, Huaian, 223300, China

    Zheng-Jun Pan

  3. Huaian Fisheries Research Institute, Jiangsu Province, Huaian, 223001, China

    Feng-Jian Zhou & Xiao-Gang Qiang

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  1. Zheng-Jun Pan
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Correspondence to Jian-Fang Gui.

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Pan, ZJ., Li, XY., Zhou, FJ. et al. Identification of Sex-Specific Markers Reveals Male Heterogametic Sex Determination in Pseudobagrus ussuriensis . Mar Biotechnol 17, 441–451 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10126-015-9631-2

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