a Institut de Ciències del Mar, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) , Barcelona , Spain.
b MARBEC, Univ. Montpellier, Ifremer-CNRS-IRD , Palavas-les-Flots , France.
Epigenetics. 2018;13(9):988-1011. doi: 10.1080/15592294.2018.1529504. Epub 2018 Oct 23.
The integration of genomic and environmental influences into methylation patterns to bring about a phenotype is of central interest in developmental epigenetics, but many details are still unclear. The sex ratios of the species used here, the European sea bass, are determined by genetic and temperature influences. We created four families from parents known to produce offspring with different sex ratios, exposed larvae to masculinizing temperatures and examined, in juvenile gonads, the DNA methylation of seven genes related to sexual development by a targeted sequencing approach. The genes most affected by both genetics and environment were cyp19a1a and dmrt1, with contrasting sex-specific methylation and temperature responses. The relationship between cyp19a1a methylation and expression is relevant to the epigenetic regulation of vertebrate sex, and we report the evidence of such relationship only below a methylation threshold, ~ 80%, and that it was sex-specific: negatively correlated in females but positively correlated in males. From parents to offspring, the methylation in gonads was midway between oocytes and sperm, with bias towards oocytes for amh-r2, er-β2, fsh-r and cyp19a1a. In contrast, dmrt1 levels resembled those of sperm. The methylation of individual CpGs from foxl2, er-β2 and nr3c1 were conserved from parents to offspring, whereas those of cyp19a1a, dmrt1 and amh-r2 were affected by temperature. Utilizing a machine-learning procedure based on the methylation levels of a selected set of CpGs, we present the first, to our knowledge, system based on epigenetic marks capable of predicting sex in an animal with ~ 90% accuracy and discuss possible applications.
将基因组和环境影响整合到甲基化模式中以产生表型是发育表观遗传学的核心关注点,但许多细节仍不清楚。这里使用的物种,欧洲鲈鱼的性别比例由遗传和温度的影响决定。我们从已知产生不同性别比例后代的父母那里创建了四个家系,使幼虫暴露在雄性化温度下,并通过靶向测序方法检查了与性发育相关的七个基因在幼鱼性腺中的 DNA 甲基化情况。受遗传和环境影响最大的基因是 cyp19a1a 和 dmrt1,其甲基化和温度反应具有相反的性别特异性。cyp19a1a 甲基化与表达之间的关系与脊椎动物性别表观遗传调控有关,我们仅报告了低于约 80%的甲基化阈值的证据,并且这种关系是性别特异性的:在雌性中呈负相关,而在雄性中呈正相关。从父母到后代,性腺中的甲基化处于卵母细胞和精子之间,amh-r2、er-β2、fsh-r 和 cyp19a1a 偏向于卵母细胞,而 dmrt1 水平则类似于精子。foxl2、er-β2 和 nr3c1 中的单个 CpG 的甲基化从父母到后代是保守的,而 cyp19a1a、dmrt1 和 amh-r2 的甲基化则受到温度的影响。利用基于选定 CpG 甲基化水平的机器学习程序,我们提出了第一个、据我们所知,基于表观遗传标记能够以约 90%的准确率预测动物性别的系统,并讨论了可能的应用。