De novo oviduct transcriptome of the moor frog Rana arvalis : a quest for maternal effect candidate genes

PeerJ

article

Longfei Shu¹  Jie Qiu³  Katja Räsänen¹ 

[1] Department of Aquatic Ecology, Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology;Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich;Institutue of Crop Science and Institute of Bioinformatics, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University

关键词: Amphibian;    Egg coat;    Glycosylation;    Maternal effect genes;    RNA seq;    Rana arvalis;    Transcriptome;    Moor frog;    Oviduct;    Acidification;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.5452

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Maternal effects can substantially affect ecological and evolutionary processes in natural populations. However, as they often are environmentally induced, establishing their genetic basis is challenging. One important, but largely neglected, source of maternal effects are egg coats (i.e., the maternally derived extracellular matrix that surrounds the embryo). In the moor frog, the gelatinous egg coats (i.e., egg jelly) are produced in the mother’s oviduct and consist primarily of highly glycosylated mucin type O-glycans. These O-glycans affect jelly water balance and, subsequently, contribute to adaptive divergence in embryonic acid tolerance. To identify candidate genes for maternal effects, we conducted RNAseq transcriptomics on oviduct samples from seven R. arvalis females, representing the full range of within and among population variation in embryonic acid stress tolerance across our study populations. De novo sequencing of these oviduct transcriptomes detected 124,071 unigenes and functional annotation analyses identified a total of 57,839 unigenes, of which several identified genes likely code for variation in egg jelly coats. These belonged to two main groups: mucin type core protein genes and five different types of glycosylation genes. We further predict 26,711 gene-linked microsatellite (simple sequence repeats) and 231,274 single nucleotide polymorphisms. Our study provides the first set of genomic resources for R. arvalis, an emerging model system for the study of ecology and evolution in natural populations, and gives insight into the genetic architecture of egg coat mediated maternal effects.

【 授权许可】

CC BY