The effects of dietary 17beta-estradiol (E(2)) on growth and liver transcriptomics were investigated in the yellow perch (Perca flavescens). After a 3-mo treatment, E(2) significantly stimulated an increase in length and weight of juvenile male and female perch relative to control animals. The increase was significantly greater in females compared with males. Separate, unnormalized cDNA libraries were constructed from equal quantities of RNA from 6 male and 6 female livers of E(2)-treated and control perch, and 3,546 and 3,719 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were obtained, respectively. To characterize E(2)-regulated transcripts, EST frequencies between libraries were calculated within contiguous sequences that were assembled from the combined ESTs of both libraries. Frequencies were also determined in EST transcript groupings produced by aligning all of the ESTs from both libraries at the nucleotide level. From these analyses, there were 28 annotated transcripts that were regulated by 75% between libraries and for which there were at least 5 ESTs of the same transcript between libraries. Regulation of a subset (14) of these transcripts was confirmed by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (QPCR). Transcripts that were upregulated by E(2) included reproduction-related proteins, binding proteins, and proteases and protease inhibitors. While not part of the transcript frequency analysis, QPCR showed significant upregulation of estrogen receptor esr1 and of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) in E(2) livers. E(2)-downregulated transcripts represented a variety of functional categories including components of the respiratory chain, lipid transport and metabolism, glycolysis, amino acid and nitrogen metabolism, binding proteins, a hydrolytic enzyme, and a transcriptional regulator. In perch it appears that exogenous estrogen drastically shifts liver metabolism toward the production of lipoproteins and carbohydrate binding proteins, and that the growth-promoting action may involve an increase in hepatic IGF-I production.