State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, The Innovative Academy of Seed Design, Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
College of Fisheries, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
Front Immunol. 2022 Aug 24;13:938326. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.938326. eCollection 2022.
Organisms are colonized by microorganism communities and play a pivotal role in host function by influencing physiology and development. In mammals, bacterial community may alter gonadal maturation and drive sex-specific differences in gene expression and metabolism. However, bacterial microbiota diversity in the gonads of early vertebrates has not been fully elucidated. Here, we focused on the swamp eel (), which naturally undergoes sex reversal, and systematically analyzed the bacterial microbiota profiles between females and males using 16S rRNA gene sequences. Specifically, the microbial abundance and community diversity of gonads in males were higher than in females. Although Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria were characterized as the dominating phyla in ovary and testis, the relative abundance of Firmicutes was significantly higher in males than females. Detailed analysis of the microbial community revealed that were the dominant bacteria in ovaries and in testes of . More importantly, we proposed that differences in the microbial composition and distribution between ovaries and testes may be linked to functional categories in , especially metabolism. These findings represent a unique resource of bacterial community in gonads to facilitate future research about the mechanism of how microbiota influence sex-specific differences and sex reversal in vertebrates.
生物被微生物群落定植，并通过影响生理和发育在宿主功能中发挥关键作用。在哺乳动物中，细菌群落可能改变性腺成熟，并驱动基因表达和代谢的性别特异性差异。然而，早期脊椎动物性腺中的细菌微生物多样性尚未完全阐明。在这里，我们专注于自然发生性反转的鳗鲡，并使用 16S rRNA 基因序列系统地分析了雌性和雄性之间的细菌微生物组谱。具体来说，雄性性腺中的微生物丰度和群落多样性高于雌性。尽管变形菌门、厚壁菌门、拟杆菌门和放线菌门被认为是卵巢和睾丸中的主要门，但在雄性中厚壁菌门的相对丰度明显高于雌性。对微生物群落的详细分析表明，在鳗鲡的卵巢中，是优势菌，而在睾丸中，是优势菌。更重要的是，我们提出，卵巢和睾丸中微生物组成和分布的差异可能与 中的功能类别有关，特别是代谢。这些发现代表了性腺中细菌群落的独特资源，有助于未来研究微生物如何影响脊椎动物的性别特异性差异和性反转的机制。
