PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Matthew D. MacManes
AU  - Suzanne H. Austin
AU  - Andrew Booth
AU  - April Austin
AU  - Victoria Farrar
AU  - Rebecca M. Calisi
TI  - Widespread patterns of sexually dimorphic gene expression in an avian hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal (HPG) axis
AID  - 10.1101/085365
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 085365
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/04/085365.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/02/04/085365.full
AB  - The hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis is a key biological system required for reproduction and associated sexual behaviors to occur. In the avian reproductive model of the rock dove (Columba livia), we characterized the transcript community of each tissue of the HPG axis in both sexes, thereby significantly expanding our mechanistic insight into HPG activity. We report greater sex-biased differential expression in the pituitary as compared to the hypothalamus, with multiple genes more highly expressed in the male pituitary being related to secretory function, and multiple genes more highly expressed in the female pituitary being related to reproduction, growth, and development. We report tissue-specific and sex-biased expression in genes commonly investigated when studying reproduction, highlighting the need for sex parity in future studies. In addition, we uncover new targets of investigation in both sexes, which could potentially change our understanding of HPG function.