Cell Sex

Dear Colleagues,

The existence of species (organisms of all levels, up to humans) and their biodiversity are delicately sustained in today’s changing world. Current hectic lifestyles, ever-growing industrialization, and consequent increasing environmental degradation impact all organisms, especially in terms of their reproductive health and individual sexuality. It is well-established that sex-specific changes within the germline occur during fetal development. They takes different forms as primordial germ cells (PGCs), germline stem cells (GSCs), gonia, oocytes and spermatocytes, and, finally, mature gametes. During their journey, germ cells interact with the surrounding somatic cells and decide their sexually dimorphic fate under the influence of other aspects of body physiology of an organism. Extensive research from the past has shown that various signaling pathways work simultaneously in a coordinated (synergistic) or uncoordinated (antagonistic) fashion and collectively bring decisive signaling molecules that decide sexual fate. However, many unknown pathways are being discovered, or others are yet to be discovered. In some of the recently conducted research, it is reported that germ cells maintain a record of life encounters as epigenetic memory, and at fetal stages, during PGC speciation, this eventually reprograms the parental epigenome and passes on some of these epigenetic memories to their descendants, which upon translation puts hefty tags in their reproductive success.

Considering some recent research evidence, it is fairly clear that any disruption in sexuality potentially hampers the reproductive capabilities of animals for generations through infertility, sterility, aneuploidy, congenital disorders, tumors, and/or sex reversal.

Teleost models, such as zebrafish and medaka, have become increasingly useful in biomedical science, and the application of such research models is immensely relevant to the scope of our research topic. This topic will therefore provide a platform focusing on the utilization of fish models to investigate the scope of “cell sex”, and will include various aspects such as:

• Germ cell sexuality.
• Transgenerational effects of epigenetics on reproductive sustainability.
• Endocrine disruptors and sex change.
• Model fish epigenetics and omics for the sex spectrum.
• Multicellular interaction of sexual physiology.

Dr. Tapas Chakraborty
Guest Editor

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• teleost
• sex spectrum
• transgenerational epigenetics
• omics
• sex change
• endocrine disruptors