| Title: | Species-Specific Duplication and Adaptive Evolution of a Candidate Sex Pheromone Receptor Gene in Weather Loach |
| Address: | "Fisheries Research Institute, Wuhan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan 430207, China. College of Fisheries, Key Lab of Agricultural Animal Genetics, Breeding and Reproduction of Ministry of Education/Key Lab of Freshwater Animal Breeding of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 2073-4425 (Electronic) 2073-4425 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "The release and sensation of sex pheromone play a role in the reproductive success of vertebrates including fish. Previous studies have shown that the weather loach Misgurnus anguillicaudatus perceives sex pheromones by olfaction to stimulate courtship behavior. It was speculated that weather loaches use smell to recognize intraspecific mates. However, the identification of loach pheromone receptor has not been reported. By comparative transcriptomic approach, we found that the olfactory receptor gene or114-1 was male-biasedly expressed in the olfactory epithelium of M. anguillicaudatus, M. bipartitus and the closely related species Paramisgurnus dabryanus. This sex-biased expression pattern implicated that or114-1 presumably encoded a sex pheromone receptor in loaches. M. bipartitus and P. dabryanus, like zebrafish, possess one or114-1 only. However, in M. anguillicaudatus, or114-1 has two members: Ma_or114-1a and Ma_or114-1b. Ma_or114-1a, not Ma_or114-1b, showed sex-differential expression in olfactory epithelium. Ma_or114-1b has base insertions that delayed the stop codon, causing the protein sequence length to be extended by 8 amino acids. Ma_or114-1a was subject to positive selection resulting in adaptive amino acid substitutions, which indicated that its ligand binding specificity has probably changed. This adaptive evolution might be driven by the combined effects of sexual selection and reinforcement of premating isolation between the sympatric loach species" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Cypriniformes/*genetics Female Fish Diseases/genetics Fish Proteins/*genetics Gene Expression Regulation/genetics Male Phylogeny Receptors, Pheromone/*genetics Sex Attractants/*genetics Species Specificity Transcriptome/genetics Zebrafish/genetics;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineZhong, Lei Wang, Weimin Cao, Xiaojuan eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Switzerland 2021/12/25 Genes (Basel). 2021 Nov 23; 12(12):1845. doi: 10.3390/genes12121845" |
