Identification and functional analysis of a sex-biased transcriptional factor Foxl2 in the bay scallop Argopecten irradians irradians.

Comp Biochem Physiol B Biochem Mol Biol

Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yantai 264003, China; College of Marine Science and Engineering, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao 266109, China. Electronic address:

Published: September 2021

AI Article Synopsis

  • The study focuses on the Foxl2 gene, known to be important for ovarian differentiation and maintenance, and explores its role in hermaphroditic scallops, specifically Argopecten irradians irradians.
  • Researchers successfully cloned and characterized a version of the Foxl2 gene (AiFoxl2), finding significant expression in the ovaries during specific developmental stages.
  • Knockdown experiments revealed that AiFoxl2 is crucial for female development, as its absence led to increased expression of male-related genes and decreased expression of female-related genes.

Article Abstract

Transcription factor Foxl2 is an evolutionarily conserved gene playing pivotal roles in regulation of early ovarian differentiation and maintenance in animals. However, the Foxl2 gene has not been thoroughly studied in hermaphroditic scallops. In this study, we cloned and characterized a Foxl2 (designated as AiFoxl2) from the bay scallop Argopecten irradians irradians. The open reading frame of AiFoxl2 was 1122 bp encoding 373 amino acids residues and contained a conserved forkhead box domain. Quantitative real-time PCR showed that AiFoxl2 was mainly expressed in the ovary. Moreover, the highest expression of AiFoxl2 in the ovary was detected at proliferative stage and growing stage, while the lowest level was found at resting stage. During the embryonic and larval development, expression of AiFoxl2 was found first in fertilized eggs, increased significantly at the blastula stage, and reached peak value at the D-larvae stage. When AiFoxl2 was knocked down, testis development-related genes (Dmrt1, Sox7 and Sox9) were up-regulated significantly while the ovary development-related genes (Vg, HSD14, and GATA-1) were down-regulated manifestly. These findings suggested that AiFoxl2 was a female-related gene in A. i. irradians and may be involved in regulation of ovarian development and differentiation.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpb.2021.110638DOI Listing

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