Background: Nowadays, the molecular mechanisms governing TSD (temperature-dependent sex determination) or GSD + TE (genotypic sex determination + temperature effects) remain a mystery in fish.
Methods: We developed three all-female families of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus), and the family with the highest male ratio after high-temperature treatment was used for transcriptome analysis.
Results: First, gonadal histology analysis indicated that the histological morphology of control females (CF) was not significantly different from that of high-temperature-treated females (TF) at various development stages. However, the high-temperature treatment caused a lag of spermatogenesis in high-temperature-induced neomales (IM). Next, we sequenced the transcriptome of CF, TF, and IM Nile tilapia. 79, 11,117, and 11,000 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected in the CF-TF, CF-IM, and TF-IM comparisons, respectively, and 44 DEGs showed identical expression changes in the CF-TF and CF-IM comparisons. Principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that three individuals in CF and three individuals in TF formed a cluster, and three individuals in IM formed a distinct cluster, which confirmed that the gonad transcriptome profile of TF was similar to that of CF and different from that of IM. Finally, six sex-related genes were validated by qRT-PCR.
Conclusions: This study identifies a number of genes that may be involved in GSD + TE, which will be useful for investigating the molecular mechanisms of TSD or GSD + TE in fish.
Keywords: Nile tilapia; high temperature; lasting effect; masculinization; transcriptome.