The whole genome variation between the sexes of Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii)

Gad Degani ^1,2 Akram Hajouja ^1,2 Avshalom Hurvitz ³ Michal Nevo ⁴ Isana Veksler-Lublisky ⁴ Ari Meerson ^1,2

¹MIGAL – Galilee Research Institute, Kiryat Shmona, Israel
²Tel-Hai Academic College, Upper Galilee, Israel
³Kibbutz Dan Fishery, Israel
⁴Department of Software and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Science, Ben Gurion University, Israel

The present study examined the different DNA fragments in the whole genome between sexes in Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), which produce black caviar and have a very high economic value, in order to find a molecular marker that separates between males and females. The whole genome of Russian sturgeon includes between 460 and 590 million segments of 100 bp DNA. In an analysis of genome variation between five females and five males, 536 segments of 100 bp DNA were found to differ in females compared to males and 339 in the variation in males compared to females. Using 200 segments of 100 bp DNA from females that differ from males, expression was measured using qRTPCR. Four segments were found to have a significantly high expression in females (coded to bcl2l13, AnacB10, ABRD572 and ABRD541) and three in males (coded to LG35, CH73-342D12 and Tmcc3).