Jie Mei

Huazhong Agricultural University | HZAU · College of Fisheries

The regulatory mechanism of gonadal sex differentiation, which is complex and regulated by multiple factors, remains poorly understood in teleosts. Recently, we have shown that compromised androgen and estrogen synthesis with increased progestin leads to all-male differentiation with proper testis development and spermatogenesis in cytochrome P450...

Seahorses are valuable species for their use in traditional Chinese medicine, as well as for the aquarium trade as ornamentals and curiosities. To balance market demand and reduce pressure on wild populations, many countries have undertaken commercial seahorse cultivation. Skeletal development plays a crucial role in fish fry culture, affecting ext...

Fat deposition and off-flavor in the muscle are the main problems affecting flesh quality in aquaculture fish, especially in catfish, leading to low acceptability and reduced market price. Yellow catfish is an important aquaculture fish in China. In this study, 40 days of depuration and starvation treatment were explored to improve the muscle quali...

The darkbarbel catfish (Pelteobagrus vachelli), an economically important aquaculture species in China, is extensively employed in hybrid yellow catfish production due to its superior growth rate. However, information on its genome has been limited, constraining further genetic studies and breeding programs. Leveraging the power of PacBio long-read...

To investigate the effects of different rice growth periods and different farming modes on the muscle nutrition, intestinal microbes and liver metabolome profiling of yellow catfish in rice-fish symbiosis. 16S rDNA and non-targeted metabolomic methods were used to analyze the differences of muscle amino acids and fatty acids, intestinal microbes’ d...

Background: To explore the mechanism underlying suitable rice purification time and the resulting regulation of muscle mass in fish raised in rice paddies, 16S rDNA and metabolomics methods were used to perform analyses of intestinal microbial diversity and muscle metabolome in common carp. Results: There were significant differences in Chao1 and o...

Channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus), a commercially important aquaculture species, is native to North America and has spread worldwide. Channel catfish exhibit sexual size dimorphism, with males growing faster than females. Therefore, the creation of an all-male population is promising for growth improvement in channel catfish. In the process of...

Background Egg quality is a major concern in fish reproduction and development. An effective evaluation of egg quality prior to fertilization is helpful in improving the fertilization rate and survival rate of the larva. In this study, we aim to identify quality instructors from the combination study of fertilization rate, hatching rate, embryo mal...

Catfish (Siluriformes) are one of the most diverse vertebrate orders and are characterized by whisker-like barbels, which are important sensory organs in most of teleosts. However, their specific biological functions are still unclear. Red-tail catfish (Hemibagrus wyckioides) is well-known catfish species with four pairs of barbels, of which the ma...

In mammals, right open reading frame kinases (RIOKs) are initially reported to participate in cancer cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion, and recently they have been related to host immune response. Little is known about the homologs of RIOKs in fish. In the current study, we cloned three homologous genes of RIOK family in yellow...

Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) is a worldwide commercially important aquatic species. In recent years, pathogenic diseases cause great economic losses and hinder the industry of largemouth bass. To further understand the immune response against pathogens in largemouth bass, splenic transcriptome libraries of largemouth bass were respective...

Vertebrate interferon (IFN) expression is fine-tuned in order to avoid excessive tissue injury under normal conditions and during virus infection. FinTRIM (fish novel TRIM, FTR) proteins are reported to regulate the fish IFN response. Here, we identify a novel finTRIM gene from yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco), which is sequentially named P...

Paternal factors play an important role in embryonic morphogenesis and contribute to sexual dimorphism in development. To assess the effect of paternal DNA on sexual dimorphism of embryonic genome activation, we compared X and Y sperm and different sexes of embryos before sex determination. Through transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) and whole-genom...

Assembly of complete Y chromosome is a significant challenge in animals with XX/XY sex determination system. Recently, we created YY supermale yellow catfish by crossing XY males with sex-reversed XY females, providing a valuable model for Y chromosome assembly and evolution. Here, we assembled highly homomorphic Y and X chromosomes by sequencing g...

Although evolutionary fates and expression patterns of duplicated genes have been extensively investigated, how duplicated genes co-regulate a biological process in polyploids remains largely unknown. Here, we identified two gsdf (gonadal somatic cell-derived factor) homeologous genes ( gsdf-A and gsdf-B ) in hexaploid gibel carp ( Carassius gibeli...

Sex control is an essential technology to produce mono-sex populations with high growth rates and product quality in aquaculture. To produce an all-female population in fish with the XX/XY sex determination system, the generation of XX neomales is the critical step and they have been successfully created by different approaches, such as androgens,...

Aquaculture is one of the most efficient modes of animal protein production and plays an important role in global food security. Aquaculture animals exhibit extraordinarily diverse sexual phenotypes and underlying mechanisms, providing an ideal system to perform sex determination research, one of the important areas in life science. Moreover, sex i...

Sexual size dimorphism has been widely observed in a large number of animals including fish species. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a powerful tool to dissect the genetic basis of complex traits, whereas the sex-differences in the genomics of animal complex traits have been ignored in the GWAS analysis. Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidr...

Longsnout catfish (Leiocassis longirostris), an important commercial fish in China, shows significant sexual size dimorphism. However, the sex determination system and mechanism of longsnout catfish remain unknown. In this study, an effective protocol of artificial gynogenesis using heterologous sperm was successfully developed and male heterogamet...

The regulation mechanism of the hybrid yellow catfish “Huangyou-1” was assessed under conditions of hypoxia and reoxygenation by examination of oxygen sensors and by monitoring respiratory metabolism, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. The expressions of genes related to oxygen sensors (HIF-1α, HIF-2α, VHL, HIF-1β, PHD2, and FIH-1) were upregulated i...

Nutritional components and feeding strategies are multifarious amongst different producers, whereas they are just designed for fish farming but not suitable for improving the reproductive performance of broodfish. Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco), an omnivorous species, is one of the important aquaculture fish in China. In order to improve...

Hybrid sterility has been widely observed in fish species; however, the molecular mechanisms of hybrid sterility are not well understood. In this work, we compared the reproductive development of yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, PF) and hybrid yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco ♀ × Pelteobagrus vachelli ♂) from embryo to adult at cellu...

Loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) is an essential commercial fish in China. We aimed to give some notes on brain histology of loach fish and characterize the sites of stem cells in the brain. As well as, we showed the sites of proliferating cells with detection of their glial property. To this end, we histologically observed the structure of the b...

Bucky ball (Buc) is involved in germ plasm (GP) assembly during early zebrafish development by regulating GP mRNA expression via an unknown mechanism. The present study demonstrates that an m⁶A reader Igf2bp3 interacts and colocalizes with Buc in the GP. Similar to the loss of Buc, the genetic deletion of maternal igf2bp3 in zebrafish leads to abno...

The high mortality in larval-to-juvenile transition is a big problem in aquaculture which is related to the shifting from endogenous to exogenous feeding. However, the underlying causes remain poorly understood. Autophagy, an evolutionary regulated cellular mechanism, is highly conserved in eukaryotic organisms to maintain energy homeostasis agains...

The regulation mechanism of the hybrid yellow catfish “Huangyou-1” was assessed under conditions of hypoxia and reoxygenation by examination of oxygen sensors and by monitoring respiratory metabolism, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. The expressions of genes related to oxygen sensors ( HIF-1α , HIF-2α , VHL , HIF-1β , PHD2 , and FIH-1 ) were upregu...

We aimed to characterize the proliferation of stem cells in brain of loach (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus), which is an essential commercial fish in China. To this end, we histologically observed the structure of the brain. We also used fluorescent in situ hybridization to evaluatethe localization of Msi1, Bmi1, and Sox2. Proliferating cells were eval...

Multiple repeat spawners make large contributions to long-term population stability and aquaculture breeding programs. A high percentage of female yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) died for spawning failure or incomplete spawning after artificial spawning by traditional synthetic hormones including human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), luteini...

Primordial germ cells (PGCs) are singled out from somatic cells very early during embryogenesis, then they migrate towards the genital ridge and differentiate into gametes through oogenesis or spermatogenesis. Labeling PGCs with Localized RNA expression (LRE) technique by fluorescent proteins has been widely applied among teleost species to study t...

The reproductive process is usually controlled by the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonad (HPG) axis in vertebrates, while Kiss/GnRH system in the hypothalamus is required for mammalian reproduction but dispensable for fish reproduction. The regulation of FSH/LH expression in fish species is still unknown. Here, we identified miR-200 s on chromosome 23 (c...

Edwardsiella ictaluri (E. ictaluri) is one of the main bacterial pathogens in catfish which has caused serious economic loss to yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) in China. In our previous work, we demonstrated that CypA was up-regulated at the early stage of E. ictaluri infection in yellow catfish and displayed strong chemotactic activity fo...

Sox9 is a multifunctional gene and plays crucial roles in vertebrate development including chondrogensis. In teleost, due to the genome duplication event, there are two co-orthologs sox9a and sox9b. In this study, CRISPR/Cas9 technology was performed to disrupt the function of either sox9a or sox9b. All sox9a mutants (sox9aΔ10 and sox9aΔ67) and sox...

Early embryogenesis relies on maternally inherited mRNAs. Although the mechanism of maternal mRNA degradation during maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT) has been extensively studied in vertebrates, how the embryos maintain maternal mRNA stability remains unclear. Here, we identify Igf2bp3 as an important regulator of maternal mRNA stability in zeb...

Darkbarbel catfish (Pelteobagrus vachelli) is an important commercial fish species in China. However, its wild populations have undergone a dramatic decline in recent years because of overfishing and habitat destruction for its spawning. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to develop sufficient molecular markers for the effective conservation and mol...

Fish mucus acts as a physiological and immunological barrier for maintaining normal fish physiology and conferring defense against pathogens infection. Here we report proteomic profiling of skin mucus of yellow catfish before and after E. ictaluri infection by Label-free LC-MS/MS approach. A total of 918 non-redundant proteins were identified from...

IGF2BPs, a subclass of RNA-binding proteins, regulate cellular differentiation, proliferation and migration during multiple organs development, but their functions in liver development still remain unclear. Here, in this study, whole-mount in situ hybridization showed that igf2bp1 was constantly and stably expressed at early stages of embryo develo...

Hepatic disorders have been increasing in recent years because of high carbohydrate diets. Hepatocytes depend mainly on the basal autophagy to maintain hepatic glucose/lipid homeostasis in mammals. However, the regulatory mechanisms of autophagy in hepatic energy metabolism are still unknown in fish species. Accordingly, mutant zebrafish lines of a...

The Fused in sarcoma gene (FUS) is a RNA-binding protein implicated in the regulation of transcription and pre-mRNA splicing. Mutations in FUS lead to neurodegenerative diseases including ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) in mammals. However, little is known about fus function in fish species. Here, we generated frame-shift alleles in the zebrafi...

High mortality is usually observed during the transition from larvae to juvenile in teleost which is related to the transition from endogenous to exogenous feeding. Autophagy is an evolutionary regulated cellular mechanism highly conserved in eukaryotic organisms to maintain energy homeostasis against stress including starvation. To investigate whe...

Sex‐specific markers provide significant molecular basis for sex control breeding biotechnology to produce all‐male or all‐female fish in commercial breeding. Redtail catfish (Mystus wyckioides), one of the commercial bagrid catfishes distributed in Southeast Asian, which have a long sexual maturation period that can last 3–5 years and males have a...

RRecombination-activating gene 2 (rag 2) allies with recombination-activating gene 1 (rag 1) and regulates the V(D)J recombination of immunoglobulin (Ig) and T-cell receptor (TCR) genes. Being a key player in the adaptive immune response of vertebrates, functional characterization of rag 2 from yellow catfish is beneficial for understanding the bio...

Mitochondrial homoplasmy is essential for normal development, as its heteroplasmy usually leads to abnormal or diseased phenotypes in mammals. So far, diverse mechanisms have been proposed to play roles in ensuring uniparental inheritance of mitochondria in many organisms. In recent years, hybrid yellow catfish from mating female yellow catfish (Pe...

Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) is an important aquaculture species which is widely distributed, especially in the Yangtze River of China. To facilitate its conservation and stock improvement, 273 yellow catfish samples from the Yangtze River (seven populations) and Baiyangdian (BYD) Lake were genotyped using eight microsatellites in combi...

Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) is an important freshwater species for aquaculture production in China and East Asia. Sexual size dimorphism in yellow catfish has been observed, since the growth rate in males is much higher than that in females. Thus, production of all‐male yellow catfish has significant commercial value in aquaculture. In...

Background The yellow catfish, Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, belonging to Siluriformes order, is an economically important freshwater aquaculture fish species in Asia, especially in Southern China. The aquaculture industry has recently been facing tremendous challenges in germplasm degeneration and poor diseases resistance. As the yellow catfish exhibit...

The sex-determining genes are found to be variable among different fish species. Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) is an important aquaculture fish species in China with XX/XY sex-determining type. Recently, YY super-male yellow catfish has been successfully produced by combining hormonal-induced sex reversal method with sex chromosome-linke...

Sexual size dimorphism is an interesting phenomenon occurred in many fish species. Wildtype zebrafish exhibits a significant sexual dimorphism in body size at the adult stage. Previous studies indicated that sexual size dimorphism was eliminated in stat5b-mutated zebrafish. Herein, the comparative transcriptome analysis was conducted to observe the...

Differential gene expression analysis and clustering. Heat map of the DEGs among four comparisons (WFM vs. WM, SFM vs. SM, WFM vs. SFM, and WM vs. SM). (A) Common DEGs of WFM vs. SFM and WM vs. SM; (B). Common DEGs of WFM vs. WM and SFM vs. SM. Colors represent the summed RPM of three replicates after scaling and centering.

The information of primers used for qRT-PCR.

Summary of the sequencing data. The number 1, 2, and 3 represent three replicate samples of each group.

List of differentially expressed genes in WFM vs. WM, SFM vs. SM, WFM vs. SFM and WM vs. SM. Wildtype female (WFM), wildtype male (WM), stat5b-mutated female (SFM) and stat5b-mutated male (SM).

Module Membership vs. gene significance for growth trait. (A) Female module membership in blue module vs. gene significance for body length. (B) Female module membership in blue module vs. gene significance for body weight. (C) Male module membership in turquoise module vs. gene significance for body length. (D) Male module membership in turquoise...

Detailed information of common DEGs in WFM vs. SFM and WM vs. SM.

Detailed information of candidate genes related to growth traits in both sexes.

Cluster dendrogram with the WGCNA approach based on the correlation coefficients of DEGs between wildtype and stat5b-mutated livers in female (A) and male (B). The height shows the distance between two separate genes. Branches in the cluster dendrogram indicate the divided modules based on gene clustering result. Colored modules indicate the member...

The growth traits (body length and body weight) of 3-month-old zebrafish for transcriptome.

Detailed information of candidate genes related to growth traits in female blue module and male turquoise module, in combination with the findings in WFM vs. WM and SFM vs. SM.

Podocytes are essential elements of the glomerular filtration barrier and relevant to many kidney diseases. But the molecular mechanism in podocyte development is still unclear. Wilms tumor protein (WT1) is an essential factor for urogenital system development. Zebrafish have two wt1 genes, naming wt1a and wt1b. Here, we examined the roles of both...

Besides its well-documented roles in cell proliferation, apoptosis and carcinogenesis, the function of p53―microRNA axis has been recently revealed in reproductive system. Recent studies indicated that miR-200 family members are dys-regulated in nonobstructive azoospermia patients, whereas their functions remain poorly documented. The aims of this...

Increasing attention has been focused on the role of microRNAs in post-transcription regulation during spermatogenesis. Recently, the miR-34 family has been shown to be involved in the spermatogenesis, but the clear function of the miR-34 family in spermatogenesis is still obscure. Here we analyzed the function of miR-34a, a member of the miR-34 fa...

Amino acid supplementation is an efficient and effective strategy to increase sperm quality. In our research, a comparative study was conducted to screen free amino acids to improve sperm motility, and we found that leucine was the most efficient one. Leucine treatment increases sperm motility depending on the activation of PI3K/Akt signaling pathw...

Sexual size dimorphism is the consequence of differential expression of sex-biased genes related to feeding and growth. Leptin is known to regulate energy balance by regulating food intake. In order to investigate the molecular mechanism of sexual size dimorphism in yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco), the expression of leptin (lep) and its fu...

Signal transducer and activator of transcription 5b (STAT5b) has been identified as a key downstream mediator of growth hormone (GH) signaling in somatic growth of mammalian. However, the corresponding homologue gene of Stat5b is unknown in fish species. In this study, we generated loss-of-function mutants in stat5.1 and stat5.2, two stat5 homologu...

Spermatogenesis is a fundamental process in male reproductive biology, and depends on precise balance between self-renewal and differentiation of male germ cells. However, the regulative factors for controlling the balance are poorly understood. In this study, we examined the roles of amh and dmrt1 in male germ cell development by generating their...

The channel catfish virus (CCV) can cause lethal hemorrhagic infection in juvenile channel catfish, thereby resulting in a huge economic loss to the fish industry. The genome of the CCV has been fully sequenced, and its prevalence is well documented. However, less is known about the molecular mechanisms and pathogenesis of the CCV. Herein, the chan...

Cyclophilin A (CypA), a peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase (PPIase), is a ubiquitous and multi-functional protein. In addition to its role as a host cell receptor for cyclosporine A, CypA has diverse functions in inflammatory conditions and diseases. CypA secreted in response to inflammatory stimuli binds to the cell surface via its receptor, CD14...

Dmrt2b (doublesex and mab-3 related transcription factor 2b) has been revealed to be involved in zebrafish slow muscle development. However, the function of dmrt2a, a paralogue gene of dmrt2b, remains unclear during zebrafish muscle development. Here, we demonstrated that knockdown of dmrt2a resulted in severe developmental defects, and caused down...

Sex determination and differentiation in ectotherms are very complicated affairs and usually affected by both genetic and environmental factors. Because of their temperature-sensitive expression, heat shock proteins (HSPs) are good candidates for temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). Similar to most thermosensitive fish species, the male t...

STAT (Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription) gene family members have been revealed to be involved in cell growth and differentiation in vertebrates. Despite their physiological importance, their functions are poorly studied at organ and systemic levels. In this study, we performed a genome-wide analysis using data from invertebrates t...

Cyclophilin A (CypA), a well-recognized receptor for anti-inflammatory drug cyclosporine A (CsA) is a ubiquitous and multi-functional protein. Beside the diverse intracellular functions, CypA is secreted against inflammatory stimuli, where it activates and attracts leucocytes via CD147 to the stimulus site. Interestingly, it synergizes with other f...

Sperm motility is a critical determinant of male fertility in vertebrates including fish species. Chloroquine, an autophagy inhibitor, has been reported to own debated influence on sperm quality of mammalians. The objectives of this study were to determine the effect of chloroquine on sperm motility and fertilizing efficiency in yellow catfish, an...

Fish skin mucus is a dynamic barrier for invading pathogens with a variety of anti-microbial enzymes, including cyclophilin A (CypA), a multi-functional protein with peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) activity. Beside various other immunological functions, CypA induces leucocytes migration in vitro in teleost. In the current study, we hav...

Cyclophilin A (CypA) is a key member of immunophilins that has peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) activity. Besides acting as a cellular receptor for immunosuppressive drug cyclosporine A (CsA), CypA is involved in various cellular activities. CypA has an important role in viral infection which either facilitates or inhibits their replica...

Sexual size dimorphism has been observed in many cultivable fish species including yellow catfish, in which male fish grow much faster than female fish. Ghrelin is a potent stimulator of pituitary growth hormone (GH) release and known to potentially promote food intake and body weight gain. In order to investigate the molecular mechanism of sexual...

In vertebrates, growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor (GH/IGF) axis signaling plays a critical role in regulating somatic growth. Understanding the direct upstream regulators of GH/IGF axis remains a major challenge. Our studies of the zebrafish reveal that the conserved miR-200 family members are critical regulators of embryo size by targeting...

The application of microsatellite (SSR) markers for parentage determination is a booming science for selective breeding as it can track the ancestry and lineage of fish and maintain pedigree information. This study was initiated to assess the feasibility of SSR markers for parentage determination in yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) by using...

Copper-induced delayed hatching and dysfunctional movement had been reported previously, and unbalanced free copper was found in the body of humans with Alzheimer's disease and other neural diseases, but details of the underlying mechanisms are still unknown. In this study, zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos exposed to over 3.9μM of copper exhibited d...

YY super-males have rarely been detected in nature and only been artificially created in some fish species including tilapia and yellow catfish (Pelteobagrusfulvidraco), which provides a promising model for testis development and spermatogenesis. In our previous study, significant differences in morphology and miRNA expression were detected between...

Yellow catfish (Pelteobagrus fulvidraco) is an important freshwater fish species in China. In particular, an all-male population has been commercially produced for the males grow faster than females. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying sexual dimorphism of body size and sex differentiation are still unclear in yellow catfish. This study at...