title: Morphological Characters and Transcriptome Profiles Associated with Black Skin and Red Skin in Crimson Snapper (Lutjanus erythropterus).
abstract: In this study, morphology observation and illumina sequencing were performed on two different coloration skins of crimson snapper (Lutjanus erythropterus), the black zone and the red zone. Three types of chromatophores, melanophores, iridophores and xanthophores, were organized in the skins. The main differences between the two colorations were in the amount and distribution of the three chromatophores. After comparing the two transcriptomes, 9200 unigenes with significantly different expressions (ratio change ≥ 2 and q-value ≤ 0.05) were found, of which 5972 were up-regulated in black skin and 3228 were up-regulated in red skin. Through the function annotation, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis of the differentially transcribed genes, we excavated a number of uncharacterized candidate pigment genes as well as found the conserved genes affecting pigmentation in crimson snapper. The patterns of expression of 14 pigment genes were confirmed by the Quantitative real-time PCR analysis between the two color skins. Overall, this study shows a global survey of the morphological characters and transcriptome analysis of the different coloration skins in crimson snapper, and provides valuable cellular and genetic information to uncover the mechanism of the formation of pigment patterns in snappers.
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China. zhangyanping6000@163.com.
authors.forename: Yan-Ping
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. aduofa@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Zhong-Duo
authors.initials: ZD
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. gysrabbit@163.com.
authors.forename: Yu-Song
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. zjouliuli@163.com.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. yujuan0123@foxmail.com.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. apple896@126.com.
authors.forename: Shun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China. lsj@hunnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Shao-Jun
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China. liucw@gdou.edu.cn.|Fisheries College, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang 524088, China. liucw@gdou.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Chu-Wu
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D005399:Fishes / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000235:genetics*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D056726:Genetic Association Studies; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012880:Skin Pigmentation / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome
keywords: Lutjanus erythropterus; gene expression; skin color difference; transcriptome