Journal
GENERAL AND COMPARATIVE ENDOCRINOLOGY
Volume 197, Issue -, Pages 18-25Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.ygcen.2013.11.022
Keywords
Tyrosine hydroxylase; Catecholamines; Sex differentiation; Hypothalamo-hypophyseal axis; Sex steroid analogues; Teleosts
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Funding
- Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India [37(1419)/10/EMR-II]
- DBT-CREBB and Department of Science and Technology (DST)-PURSE for postdoctoral fellowships, University of Hyderabad
- CSIR, India for junior and senior research fellowships
- DBT-CREBB
- DST-PURSE
- DST-FIST
- University Grants Commission-Centre for Advanced Studies program of the Department of Animal Sciences and School of Life Sciences
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Tyrosine hydroxylase (Th) is the rate-limiting enzyme for catecholamine (CA) biosynthesis and is considered to be a marker for CA-ergic neurons, which regulate the levels of gonadotropin-releasing hormone in brain and gonadotropins in the pituitary. In the present study, we cloned full-length cDNA of Th from the catfish brain and evaluated its expression pattern in the male and female brain during early development and after sex-steroid analogues treatment using quantitative real-time PCR. We measured the CA levels to compare our results on Th. Cloned Th from catfish brain is 1.591 kb, which encodes a putative protein of 458 amino acid residues and showed high homology with other teleosts. The tissue distribution of Th revealed ubiquitous expression in all the tissues analyzed with maximum expression in male and female brain. Copy number analysis showed two-fold more transcript abundance in the female brain when compared with the male brain. A differential expression pattern of Th was observed in which the mRNA levels were significantly higher in females compared with males, during early brain development. CAs, L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, dopamine, and norepinephrine levels measured using high-performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection in the developing male and female brain confirmed the prominence of the CA-ergic system in the female brain. Sex-steroid analogue treatment using methyltestosterone and ethinylestradiol confirmed our findings of the differential expression of Th related to CA levels. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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