Ocular Metamorphosis: Decoding The Gene Regulatory Networks In Flatfish

6th International Symposium on Genomics in Aquaculture, Granada (Spain) from May 4 to 6, 2022Flatfish undergo one of the most striking metamorphoses in vertebrates, whereby a bilaterally symmetrical larva is reshaped into an asymmetrically completely different one. The most dramatic morphological change that flatfish experience during metamorphosis is the migration of one eye to the other side of the head. Although there are several hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the mechanisms that drive eye migration in flatfish, including sub-orbital skull ossification, cell proliferation in the suborbital tissue of the blind side or autophagy around the mobile eye, the molecular processes that enable head remodeling are still relatively poorly defined. To understand from a molecular point of view what is happening specifically in the migrating eye, we performed transcriptome profiling of the two eyes at three key stages of the turbot metamorphic remodeling process (pre-metamorphic, metamorphic climax, and post-metamorphic) using RNA sequencing. We investigated gene expression patterns along these three key developmental points and compared, at the same time, these patterns in both eyes: the non-migrating eye and the migrating eye. We found clusters of genes that develop a divergent expression pattern between eyes and along the timeline. Therefore, we assume that there are genes with specific functions in the eye migration process which could help to narrow down those genes actively involved in the flat fish metamorphosis processThis research was funded by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 grant number AGL2017-89648P to JR and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”N