Gonadal Expression Patterns of Steroidogenesis-Related Genes during Sex Differentiation in Zebrafish

摘要

Zebrafish is an important animal modelrecommended by the Organisation for Economic Cooperationand Development (OECD) for detecting andassessing the effects of pollutants. In fish, sexdifferentiation is often used to evaluate the effect ofendocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) as many of themare known to alter gonadal differentiation.Steroidogenesis has been shown to be highly sensitive tohormonal perturbations and is also of importance fornatural fish gonadal differentiation. In zebrafish, there isstill however a lack of knowledge regarding thesteroidogenic gene expression during gonadaldifferentiation leaving unexplored the precisemechanism of action of EDCs on this physiologicalprocess. To fulfill these gaps, we then investigated thenormal expression profiles of some selected genesinvolved in steroidogenesis during early gonadaldevelopment in zebrafish. This information will serve asa basis to investigate the molecular mechanism of EDCson steroidogenic gene expression during early gonadaldevelopment in zebrafish.