TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lamatsch, Dunja K.
A1  - Adolfsson, Sofia
A1  - Senior, Alistair M.
A1  - Christiansen, Guntram
A1  - Pichler, Maria
A1  - Ozaki, Yuichi
A1  - Smeds, Linnea
A1  - Schartl, Manfred
A1  - Nakagawa, Shinichi
T1  - A transcriptome derived female-specific marker from the invasive Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis)
JF  - PLoS ONE
N2  - Sex-specific markers are a prerequisite for understanding reproductive biology, genetic factors involved in sex differences, mechanisms of sex determination, and ultimately the evolution of sex chromosomes. The Western mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis, may be considered a model species for sex-chromosome evolution, as it displays female heterogamety (ZW/ZZ), and is also ecologically interesting as a worldwide invasive species. Here, de novo RNA-sequencing on the gonads of sexually mature G. affinis was used to identify contigs that were highly transcribed in females but not in males (i.e., transcripts with ovary-specific expression). Subsequently, 129 primer pairs spanning 79 contigs were tested by PCR to identify sex-specific transcripts. Of those primer pairs, one female-specific DNA marker was identified, Sanger sequenced and subsequently validated in 115 fish. Sequence analyses revealed a high similarity between the identified sex-specific marker and the 3' UTR of the aminomethyl transferase (amt) gene of the closely related platyfish (Xiphophorus maculatus). This is the first time that RNA-seq has been used to successfully characterize a sex-specific marker in a fish species in the absence of a genome map. Additionally, the identified sex-specific marker represents one of only a handful of such markers in fishes.
KW  - sex chromosome evolution
KW  - linkage map
KW  - determination locus
KW  - poeciliid fishes
KW  - heterogamety
KW  - Cynoglossus semilaevis
KW  - determining genes
KW  - Y chromosome
KW  - sequence alignment
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-144004
VL  - 10
IS  - 2
ER  -