AI Article Synopsis
- Sexual dimorphism plays a significant role in animal science, influencing gene expression related to economically important traits.
- The study focused on determining the sex of pig conceptuses at 25 and 35 days old by analyzing gene expression levels of specific Y chromosome-linked genes.
- The findings suggest that sex determination can be accurately performed early in pig development using RNA sequencing, emphasizing the relevance of pigs as a model for understanding sex determination in humans.
Article Abstract
Sexual dimorphism is a relevant factor in animal science, since it can affect the gene expression of economically important traits. Eventually, the interest in the prenatal phase in a transcriptome study may not comprise the period of development in which male and female conceptuses are phenotypically divergent. Therefore, it would be interesting if sex differentiation could be performed using transcriptome data, with no need for extra techniques. In this study, the sex of pig conceptuses (embryos at 25 days-old and fetuses at 35 days-old) was determined by reads counts per million (CPM) of Y chromosome-linked genes that were discrepant among samples. Thus, ten genes were used: , , , , , , and . Conceptuses that presented reads CPM sum for these genes (ΣCPM) greater than 400 were classified as males and those with ΣCPM below 2 were classified as females. It was demonstrated that the sex identification can be performed at early stages of pig development from RNA-sequencing analysis of genes mapped on Y chromosome. Additionally, these results reinforce that sex determination is a mechanism conserved across mammals, highlighting the importance of using pigs as an animal model to study sex determination during human prenatal development.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6947224 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes10121010 | DOI Listing |
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