Characterization of Gonadal Transcriptomes from the Turbot (Scophthalmus maximus)

The mechanisms underlying sexual reproduction and sex ratio determination remains unclear in turbot, a flatfish of great commercial value. And there is limited information in the turbot database regarding genes related to the reproductive system. Here, we conducted high-throughput transcriptome profiling of turbot gonad tissues to better understand their reproductive functions and to supply essential gene sequence information for marker-assisted selection programs in the turbot industry. In this study, two gonad libraries representing sex differences in S.maximus yielded 453,818 high-quality reads that were assembled into 24,611 contigs and 33,713 singletons by using 454 pyrosequencing, 13,936 CS (contigs and singletons) of which were annotated using BLASTx. GO (Gene ontology) and KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) pathway analyses, revealed that various biological functions and processes were associated with many of the annotated CS (contigs and singletons). Expression analyses showed that 510 genes were differentially expressed in males versus females; 80% of these genes were annotated. In addition, 6,484 and 6,036 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)were identified in males and females libraries, respectively. This transcriptome resource will serve as the foundation for cDNA or SNP microarray construction, gene expression characterization, and sex-specific linkage mapping in turbot.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author