Dataset Information

Analysis of the Intestinal Flora in Male Versus Female Swamp Eels (Monopterus albus).

ABSTRACT: This study aimed to analyze the intestinal flora of male versus female swamp eels, which have the unique characteristic of sex reversal. Same-aged swamp eels from the same parents, kept under the same conditions in terms of environment, diet, etc., were used as the study materials. After breeding for 1 year, 18 healthy swamp eels (nine males and nine females), weighing 39.4 ± 2.3 g, were selected. The intestinal contents of three swamp eels of the same sex were combined and labeled as follows: FM1-FM3 (n = 3) for females and MM1-MM3 (n = 3) for males. High-throughput sequencing was used to research the v3-v4 region of 16S rDNA in the intestinal flora. The results suggested significant differences in the structure, composition, and diversity of the intestinal flora of male versus female swamp eels. The relative abundances of Actinobacteria and Spirochaetes in female swamp eels were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than in male swamp eels at the phylum level. The relative abundances of Mycobacterium, Bacillus, and Vagococcus in female swamp eels were considerably higher (p < 0.05) than in male swamp eels at the genus level. The Alpha diversity of females was higher than that of males, and the Shannon index of females was also significantly higher (p < 0.05, Tukey's HSD) than that in males. Investigations of Beta diversity, including NMDS ordination, UPGMA cluster analysis, and PLS-DA analysis, showed that female and male swamp eels could be clearly distinguished based on significant differences in intestinal flora between the FM group and the MM group. LEfSe analysis showed that the dominant bacteria were Cetobacterium in male swamp eels and Clostridium_sp_ND2, Mycobacterium, Alphaproteobacteria, and Bacilli in female swamp eels. The results showed dramatic differences in the intestinal flora between the sexes, which indicates the need for a more in-depth study on sex reversal in the future.

SUBMITTER: Wang Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7203450 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Analysis of the Intestinal Flora in Male Versus Female Swamp Eels (<i>Monopterus albus</i>).

Wang Ying Y Zhang Jinhua J Zhou Qiubai Q Wang Zirui Z Gao Miao M Yang Xin X Liu Yu Y Zhang Zhengzhou Z Jiang Wenhao W Hu Chonghua C Zhang Wenping W

Frontiers in microbiology 20200430

This study aimed to analyze the intestinal flora of male versus female swamp eels, which have the unique characteristic of sex reversal. Same-aged swamp eels from the same parents, kept under the same conditions in terms of environment, diet, etc., were used as the study materials. After breeding for 1 year, 18 healthy swamp eels (nine males and nine females), weighing 39.4 ± 2.3 g, were selected. The intestinal contents of three swamp eels of the same sex were combined and labeled as follows: F ...[more]

PMID: 32425902

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Project description:A high-carbohydrate diet lowers the rearing cost and decreases the ammonia emission into the environment, whereas it can induce liver injury, which can reduce harvest yields and generate economic losses in reared fish species. Macroalgae Saccharina japonica (SJ) has been reported to improve anti-diabetic, but the protective mechanism of dietary SJ against liver injury in fish fed a high-carbohydrate diet has not been studied. Therefore, a 56-day nutritional trial was designed for swamp eel Monopterus albus, which was fed with the normal diet [20% carbohydrate, normal carbohydrate (NC)], a high carbohydrate diet (32% carbohydrate, HC), and a HC diet supplemented with 2.5% SJ (HC-S). The HC diet promoted growth and lowered feed coefficient (FC), whereas it increased hepatosomatic index (HSI) when compared with the NC diet in this study. However, SJ supplementation increased iodine contents in muscle, reduced HSI, and improved liver injury, such as the decrease of glucose (GLU), total bile acid (TBA), and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) in serum, and glycogen and TBA in the liver. Consistently, histological analysis showed that SJ reduced the area of lipid droplet, glycogen, and collagen fiber in the liver (p < 0.05). Thoroughly, the underlying protective mechanisms of SJ supplementation against HC-induced liver injury were studied by liver transcriptome sequencing coupled with pathway analysis. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs), such as the acetyl-coenzyme A synthetase (acss1), alcohol dehydrogenase (adh), interferon-induced protein with tetratricopeptide repeats 1 (ifit1), aldo-keto reductase family 1 member D1 (akr1d1), cholesterol 7-alpha-monooxygenase (cyp7a1), and UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (ugt), indicated that the pathway of glycolysis/gluconeogenesis was the main metabolic pathway altered in the HC group compared with the NC group. Meanwhile, hepatitis C, primary BA biosynthesis, and drug metabolism-cytochrome P450 were the three main metabolic pathways altered by SJ supplementation when compared with the HC group. Moreover, the BA-targeted metabolomic analysis of the serum BA found that SJ supplementation decreased the contents of taurohyocholic acid (THCA), taurochenodeoxycholic acid (TCDCA), taurolithocholic acid (TLCA), nordeoxycholic acid (NorDCA), and increased the contents of ursocholic acid (UCA), allocholic acid (ACA), and chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA). In particular, the higher contents of UCA, ACA, and CDCA regulated by SJ were associated with lower liver injury. Overall, these results indicate that the 2.5% supplementation of SJ can be recommended as a functional feed additive for the alleviation of liver injury in swamp eel-fed high-carbohydrate diets.

Project description:BackgroundThe ricefield eel is a protogynous hermaphroditic Synbranchiform species that changes sex naturally from female to male, which offers an interesting model for studying gonadal (particularly ovarian) differentiation in vertebrates. In the present study, transcriptome sequencing of the gonad of ricefield eel larvae was performed to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the ovarian differentiation and development.ResultsA total of 301,267,988 clean reads were generated from cDNA libraries of gonadal tissues of ricefield eel larvae at 6, 9, 12, and 20 days post hatching (dph), which contained undifferentiated gonads, differentiating ovaries, ovaries with oogonia, and ovaries with meiotic oocytes, respectively. De-novo assembly of all the clean reads generated a total of 265,896 unigenes with a mean size of 720 bp and a N50 of 1107 bp. RT-qPCR analysis of the developmental expression of 13 gonadal development-related functional genes indicated that RNA-seq data are reliable. Transcriptome data suggest that high expression of female development-related genes and low expression of male development-related genes in the early gonads of ricefield eel larvae participate in the cascade of sex differentiation leading to the final female phenotype. The contrasting expression patterns of genes involved in retinoid acid (RA) synthesis and degradation might result in peak production of RA at 12 dph in the gonad of ricefield eel larvae, and induce molecular events responsible for the initiation of meiosis before the meiotic signs could be observed at 20 dph. In addition, only stra6 but not stra8 could be identified in gonadal transcriptome data of ricefield eel larvae, and the expression pattern of stra6 paralleled those of genes involved in RA synthesis, suggesting that stra6 may be a downstream target of RA and play a role in RA metabolism and/or meiotic initiation in the gonad of ricefield eel larvae.ConclusionsThe present study depicted the first large-scale RNA sequencing of the gonad of ricefield eel larvae, and identified many important functional genes, GO terms and KEGG pathways involved in gonadal development and germ cell meiosis. Results of the present study will facilitate future study on the ovarian differentiation of ricefield eels and other teleosts as well.

Dataset Information

Analysis of the Intestinal Flora in Male Versus Female Swamp Eels (Monopterus albus).

Publications

Analysis of the Intestinal Flora in Male Versus Female Swamp Eels (<i>Monopterus albus</i>).

Similar Datasets

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