GSE108597
RNA-Seq provides insight to the body size evolution from comparative analyses of three Asia Sisoridae catfish
We sampled three catfishes from the Mekong River that belonging to the same Asia Sisoridae family but possessing extremely body size variations. We used RNA-Seq to compare the gene expression and sequence differences of these three sympatric species at their relatively early lives  to search the possible genetic clues that equally response to growth. We found two crucial growth related candidate genes (AKT3 and SH2B1) were consistently up-regulated in BY when compared with both GM and OS at brain, liver and muscle respectively. The adaptor protein SH2B1 can bind to dozens of signaling molecules in response to a variety of extracellular growth signals, and the AKT3 can mediate a broad of intracellular cellular responses. The SH2B1 to AKT3 pathway could regulate growth, proliferation and biosynthetic processes at multiple levels through the AKT crosstalking effects, such as the overall enhancement of ribosome biogenesis we revealed from the multistep analyses strategy. Both the up-regulated DEGs and PSGs of BY converged to pyruvate metabolic process and cell cycle, which would also be critical for BY to accumulate cell growth and proliferation more actively to conduct the final big size. The different gene expression patterns would guide the further studies about body size evolution, and therelated candidate geneshighlighted in this study worth to be tested in the future. Overall design: Sequencing a total of 27 samples; including three catfish species, each species has three individuals as replicates, and each individual uses three tissues (brain, liver and muscle).