TY - JOUR T1 - Jellyfish oocyte Maturation Inducing Hormone and neuroendocrine regulation of reproduction JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/140160 SP - 140160 AU - Noriyo Takeda AU - Yota Kon AU - Gonzalo Quiroga Artigas AU - Pascal Lapébie AU - Carine Barreau AU - Osamu Koizumi AU - Takeo Kishimoto AU - Kazunori Tachibana AU - Evelyn Houliston AU - Ryusaku Deguchi Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/29/140160.abstract N2 - Oocyte meiotic maturation is a critical process for sexually reproducing animals, and its core cytoplasmic regulators are highly conserved between species. In contrast, the few known Maturation Inducing Hormones (MIHs) that act on oocytes to initiate this process have highly variable molecular natures and their evolutionary relationships are poorly understood. Using the hydrozoan jellyfish species Clytia and Cladonema, which undergo oocyte maturation in response to dark-light/light-dark transitions, we identified from gonad transcriptome data amidated tetrapeptide sequences that could induce maturation of isolated oocytes at nanomolar concentrations. Antibody preabsorption experiments conclusively demonstrated that these W/RPRPamide-related neuropeptides account for endogenous MIH activity produced by isolated gonads. We further showed that the MIH neuropeptides are synthesised by neural-type cells in the gonad, are released following dark-light or light-dark transitions, and act on the oocyte surface. They are produced by male as well as female jellyfish and can trigger both sperm and egg release, suggesting a role in spawning coordination. We propose an evolutionary link between hydrozoan MIH and the neuropeptide hormones that regulate reproduction upstream of MIH release in bilaterian species. ER -