title: Isolation and characterization of Ff1 and Gsdf family genes in European sea bass and identification of early gonadal markers of precocious puberty in males.
abstract: Puberty represents the transition from an immature to a mature reproductive stage. The mechanisms underlying the onset of normal or precocious puberty have not yet been elucidated. With the goal of gaining an understanding of early events that occur in the testes of precocious animals during this process, a hemigonadectomy was performed on male juvenile sea bass and expression levels of candidate mRNAs were determined through quantitative real-time RT-PCR. For this purpose, the gonadal soma-derived factors gsdf1 and gsdf2, the nuclear receptor 5 subfamily members nr5a1a (ff1b), nr5a1b (ff1d), nr5a2 (ff1a) and nr5a5 (ff1c) and the proliferating cell nuclear antigen or pcna, genes with a putative role in the beginning of spermatogenesis, were isolated and cloned. Hemigonadectomy proved to be a suitable strategy for the study of gonadal stages prior to the appearance of histological differences between precocious and non-precocious fish, as it allowed the subsequent classification of these gonads. The upregulation of the gene encoding the steroidogenic acute regulatory protein (Star) in precocious testes indicates that sex steroids could play a role in the onset of spermatogenesis in sea bass. In contrast, the downregulation observed in ff1b expression indicates that this initial surge in star expression is not the result of Ff1b transactivation, suggesting an alternative pathway for this transcriptional activation. Finally, a decrease in gsdf1 expression in precocious animals suggests that this gene may play a role in the onset of puberty, while its correlation with ff1b expression points to gsdf1 as a putative target for Ff1b-mediated transactivation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Fish Physiology and Biotechnology, Instituto de Acuicultura de Torre la Sal, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 12595 Torre la Sal, Ribera de Cabanes s/n, Castellón, Spain.
authors.forename: Berta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Crespo
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gómez
authors.forename: María José
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Mazón
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carrillo
authors.forename: Silvia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zanuy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D008297:Male; D009688:Nuclear Reactors; D010473:Perciformes / Q000378:metabolism*; D010750:Phosphoproteins / Q000378:metabolism; D011629:Puberty, Precocious / Q000378:metabolism*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013737:Testis / Q000378:metabolism*; D016212:Transforming Growth Factor beta / Q000378:metabolism; D000098682:Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory Protein
chemical_list: D010750:Phosphoproteins; D016212:Transforming Growth Factor beta; D000098682:Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory Protein
keywords: Gonadal soma-derived factor; Hemigonadectomy; Nr5a subfamily; Perciform; Precocious puberty; Testis