The ontogenic gonadal transcriptomes provide insights into sex change in the ricefield eel Monopterus albus

BACKGROUND: The ricefield eel is a freshwater protogynous hermaphrodite fish and has become an important aquaculture species in China. The sex change of ricefield eel is impeding its aquaculture practice, particularly the large-scale artificial breeding. Many studies including transcriptomes of mixed gonadal samples from different individuals have been aimed to elucidate mechanisms underlying the sex change. However, the key physiological factors involved in the initiation of sex change remain to be identified. RESULTS: The present study performed transcriptomic analysis on gonadal samples of different sexual stages obtained through biopsy from the same fish undergoing sex change. A total of 539,764,816 high-quality reads were generated from twelve cDNA libraries of gonadal tissues at female (F), early intersexual (EI), mid-intersexual (MI), and late intersexual (LI) stages of three individual sex-changing fish. Pairwise comparisons between EI and F, MI and EI, and LI and MI identified 886, 319, and 10,767 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), respectively. Realtime quantitative PCR analysis of 12 representative DEGs showed similar expression profiles to those inferred from transcriptome data, suggesting the reliability of RNA-seq data for gene expression analysis. The expression of apoeb, csl2, and enpp2 was dramatically increased and peaked at EI while that of cyp19a1a, wnt4a, fgf16, and foxl2a significantly downregulated from F to EI and remained at very low levels during subsequent development until LI, which suggests that apoeb, csl2, enpp2, cyp19a1a, wnt4a, fgf16, and foxl2a may be closely associated with the initiation of sex change of ricefield eels. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, results of the present study confirmed that the down-regulation of female-related genes, such as cyp19a1a, wnt4a, fgf16, and foxl2a, is important for the sex change of ricefield eels. More importantly, some novel genes, including apoeb, csl2, and enpp2, were shown to be expressed with peak values at EI, which are potentially involved in the initiation of sex change. The present transcriptomic data may provide an important research resource for further unraveling the mechanisms underlying the sex change and testicular development in ricefield eels as well as other teleosts. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40850-022-00155-4.