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Control of testes mass by androgen receptor paralogs in a cichlid

View ORCID ProfileAndrew P. Hoadley, View ORCID ProfileRussell D. Fernald, View ORCID ProfileBeau A. Alward
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.23.432504
Andrew P. Hoadley
1University of Houston, Department of Psychology
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Russell D. Fernald
3Stanford University, Department of Biology
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Beau A. Alward
1University of Houston, Department of Psychology
2University of Houston, Department of Biology and Biochemistry
3Stanford University, Department of Biology
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  • For correspondence: balward@uh.edu
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Abstract

Steroid hormones play numerous important and diverse roles in the differentiation and development of vertebrate primary and secondary reproductive characteristics. However, the exact role of androgen receptors (ARs)—which bind circulating androgens—in this regulatory pathway is unclear. Teleost fishes further complicate this question by having two paralogs of AR (ARα and ARβ) resulting from a duplication of their ancestral genome. We investigated the functional role of these two ARs on testes growth and development by experimentally eliminating receptor function of one or both paralogs using CRISPR/Cas9 genome edited Astatotilapia burtoni, an African cichlid fish. Fish with two or more functional receptor alleles were more likely to be male compared to fish with one or fewer, suggesting that the two paralogs of the receptor may be redundant in regulating early sex determination. In contrast, we found that adult testes size was significantly affected by distinct combinations of mutant and wild-type AR alleles. We present a working model whereby ARβ facilitates testes growth and ARα causes testes regression. This mechanism may contribute to the robust social and physiological plasticity displayed by A. burtoni and other social teleost fish.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • https://github.com/AlwardLab

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted February 24, 2021.
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Control of testes mass by androgen receptor paralogs in a cichlid
Andrew P. Hoadley, Russell D. Fernald, Beau A. Alward
bioRxiv 2021.02.23.432504; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.23.432504
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Control of testes mass by androgen receptor paralogs in a cichlid
Andrew P. Hoadley, Russell D. Fernald, Beau A. Alward
bioRxiv 2021.02.23.432504; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.23.432504

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