Not Available

Not AvailableFish like higher animals, have a well-defined mechanism to produce sex steroids that play a critical role in gonadal development and maturation. In this study, we aimed to analyse the expression pattern of 3b- HSD in different tissues, during ontogenetic development and gonadal recrudescence of Clarias batra- chus. A full-length cDNA of 1617 bp including an open reading frame (ORF) of 1125 bp encoding 374 amino acids was isolated from testes of C. batrachus. The docking analysis between C. batrachus 3b-HSD protein and eurycomanone exhibited high binding affinity toward each other with total energy of 108.292 kcal/mol and van der Waals (VDW) interaction of 84.2838 kcal/mol. The 3b-HSD transcript level during ontogeny was detected in all the stages starting from the fertilized egg. The mature C. batrachus showed more expression of 3b-HSD mRNA in gonads and brain while weak expression was detected in the remaining tissues analysed. The 3b-HSD mRNA expression during annual reproductive phases of gonads was more in preparatory and pre-spawning stages than that of spawning and post- spawning phases. The mRNA expression results together suggest that 3b-HSD plays an important role in gonadal development. Furthermore, the active binding sites on 3b-HSD protein could be targeted in pharmacological drug designing to cope with reproductive dysfunctions in fish.Not Availabl