Black sea bream (Acanthopagrus schlegelii) is one of major farmed fish in Korea and inhabits in Southeast Asia including Korea, Japan, and China (Zhou et al., 2011).Since they have a good taste and are perceived as a highclass fish, its demand and productivity increase consistently (Wang et al., 2019). To improve the productivity and quality of this fish as a food material, understanding the regulatory mechanism of skeletal muscle development of this fish is required.Muscle satellite cells, also known as muscle stem cells, are the small quiescent cells located between the muscle fibre and the surrounding basement membrane and responsible for skeletal muscle regeneration (Zammit and Beauchamp, 2001;Montarras et al., 2013). In response to injury, these quiescent cells become activated, proliferate, and build new skeletal muscle (Bischoff and Heintz, 1994;Shi and Garry, 2006). It has been well known that paired box protein, PAX7, as a member of the paired box fam-