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ToolsGodden, Alice M., Silva, Willian T. A. F., Kiehl, Berrit, Jolly, Cécile, Folkes, Leighton, Alavioon, Ghazal and Immler, Simone (2025) Environmentally induced variation in sperm sRNAs is linked to gene expression and transposable elements in zebrafish offspring. Heredity, 134 (3). pp. 234-246. ISSN 0018-067X
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Abstract
Environmental factors affect not only paternal condition but may translate into the following generations where sperm-mediated small RNAs (sRNAs) can contribute to the transmission of paternal effects. sRNAs play a key role in the male germ line in genome maintenance and repair, and particularly in response to environmental stress and the resulting increase in transposable element (TE) activity. Here, we investigated how the social environment (high competition, low competition) of male zebrafish Danio rerio affects sRNAs in sperm and how these are linked to gene expression and TE activity in their offspring. In a first experiment, we collected sperm samples after exposing males to each social environment for 2 weeks to test for differentially expressed sperm micro- (miRNA) and piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNA). In a separate experiment, we performed in vitro fertilisations after one 2-week period using a split-clutch design to control for maternal effects and collected embryos at 24 h to test for differentially expressed genes and TEs. We developed new computational prediction tools to link sperm sRNAs with differentially expressed TEs and genes in the embryos. Our results support the idea that the molecular stress response in the male germ line has significant down-stream effects on the molecular pathways, and we provide a direct link between sRNAs, TEs and gene expression.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Data availability statement: The raw sRNAseq datafiles are available on GEO: GSE248535, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE248535. The raw RNA-seq datafiles are available on the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA, http://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/PRJEB66218). All metadata, raw counts data, and scripts used to generate and visualise the results used in this project are available as supplementary files in the Supplementary Materials. Funding information: WTAFS was funded by a Sven and Lilly Lawsky PhD scholarship and the study was supported by grants to SI from the Swedish Research Council, the European Research Council (ERC, Hapsel336633), the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP R0025/2015), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/S011188/1) and the European Research Council (SELECTHAPLOID—101001341). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | genetics,genetics(clinical) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300/1311 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences |
| UEA Research Groups: | Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Organisms and the Environment Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 29 Apr 2025 14:32 |
| Last Modified: | 04 May 2025 06:31 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99141 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41437-025-00752-2 |
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