Untitled

Abstract

Amphiprion ocellaris is suggested to be an excellent research model for understanding socially controlled sex change of sequential hermaphrodite teleosts. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding the genes involved in reproduction regulation in sex transition process. In order to enrich genetic data and sequence resources, Illumina HiSeq transcriptome sequencing was conducted for fully mature A. ocellaris using a multiple tissues mixing strategy. A total of 109,408,556 raw reads were obtained and 81,395 unigenes were generated by Trinity de novo assembly. Of which, 60,457 unigenes were annotated in at least one of the queried NR, COG, Swiss-Prot, KEGG and NT databases. After screening from reproduction-related Gene Ontology (GO) terms and pathways, plentiful candidate genes involved in reproductive process were identified, such as gnrh1, fsh, mtnr1a, avt, dmrt1, sox9a, amh, dax1, sf-1, foxl2 and cyp19a1. These candidates could make good starting points for profound mechanical analysis on the reproductive regulation during sex change. Moreover, 18,037 potential simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were detected in 14,212 unigenes for marker development. This transcript dataset will greatly increase available resources for gene mining and function analysis, and could contribute valuable information to in-depth studies on reproductive biology, genetics and genomics in the future.