Abstract
Annual killifish are freshwater teleosts that have a short lifespan and inhabit shallow temporal ponds in regions of the Americas and Africa. During the dry season, adults die while embryos survive by being buried in the bottom mud and hatching during the next rainy season. Juveniles reach sexual maturity within few weeks. Hence, species survival is entirely embryo-dependent, and killifish exhibit a set of unique developmental features. Epiboly is temporarily and spatially detached from axis formation (dispersion-reaggregation phase) and embryos undergo reversible arrests or diapauses. Furthermore, the egg envelope is a notably strong structure and protects the embryos during the long development that they undergo. The present study reports the identification and characterization of two egg envelope proteins and the involved genes, achzpL and achzpH, both expressed in the liver under hormone regulation. This study’s results help to elucidate the function of the embryo egg envelope. Moreover, the oestrogen-regulated liver expression of these genes allows us to suggest components of the annual killifish egg envelope as possible biomarkers to monitor water contamination.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Dr. Gonzalo Greiff form Instituto Pasteur de Montevideo for kindly collaboration during primer design, RNA quantification and qPCR and Mrs. Barbara Hunter for English assistance. The original findings presented in this paper were part of a PEDECIBA (Programa de Desarrollo Ciencias Básicas) MSc. thesis by N Papa. Financial support was provided by Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (ANII), PEDECIBA, Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC) and Facultad de Ciencias - Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay.
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Animals used in this study were manipulated according to an ethic protocol approved by the animal experimentation committee from the Universidad de la República, CHEA (Comisión Honoraria de Experimentación Animal, protocol code Facultad de Ciencias Exp240011–001205-16).
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Fig. 7
Structural model for AchzpH. The crystal structure of sperm receptor ZP3 (PDB entry 3NK3) was used as a template to build AchzpH homology model by SWISS-MODEL server. (PNG 186 kb)
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Papa, N.G., Chalar, C., Berois, N. et al. Annual killifish: an approach to the choriogenins of Austrolebias charrua egg envelope. Environ Biol Fish 102, 829–844 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-019-00861-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-019-00861-y