Meeting Abstract
P3.187 Tuesday, Jan. 6 A comparison of brain gene expression from black goby (Gobius niger) females and males with alternate mating phenotypes ABATE, M.E.*; GRACEY, A.Y.; MALAVASI, S.; TORRICELLI, P.; Boston University, Massachusetts; Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles; University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Italy; University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, Italy mabate@bu.edu
The black goby (Gobius niger) is a demersal spawning fish with females that deposit their eggs in a sheltered burrow in shallow marine waters. Territorial males provide parental care. Males have accessory sperm duct glands that release sperm trail mucins to enhance sperm longevity. These glands are less developed in small males that invest energy instead into producing relatively large testes for their body size. The difference in male reproductive structure correlates with a difference in male reproductive tactics as small males utilize a sneaker strategy to enter the nest and steal spawns from the territorial male. Hence, the black goby provides a good model for investigating the neurogenetic basis for different mating phenotypes. Mature females and males were collected from the Venetian Lagoon (Northern Adriatic Sea, Italy) during the reproductive season. Brain RNA was extracted from individual fish and hybridized against a cDNA microarray prepared for the goby Gillichthys mirabilis. A machine learning algorithm was used to identify sets of genes whose expression was associated with the fish. Although gene expression profiles were generally similar between mating phenotypes the algorithm identified a number of genes whose expression was elevated in sneaker males. The top marker gene for sneaker status was Mannose-P-dolichol utilization defect 1 (MPDU1), a gene of unknown function but which may be involved in protein N-glycosylation. These data reveal that changes in mating behavior are linked to transcriptional differences in the brain and the resulting candidate genes may have utility in studies of the regulation and evolution of this trait.
