Quality Evaluation of Reference Gene Expression on Different Tissues in Adults of Tropical Gar Atractosteus tropicus

Abstract

Tropical gar (Atractosteus tropicus) is an ancestral subtropical fish species in southeastern Mexico, which has great potential as a model species for physiological, biomedical and genomic studies. The quantification of gene expression through RT-qPCR is one of the most commonly used techniques, due to its precision, sensitivity and high performance, particularly in gene expression to compare between cells, tissues and organs; as well as different populations, stages of development, metabolism, among other conditions. This study analyzed the stability and normalization of six commonly used reference genes such as alpha elongation factor (ef1-α), beta-actin (actb), 18S ribosomal RNA (18s rrna), beta-2-microglobulin (b2m), tubulin alpha (α-tub) and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (gapdh) in the different tissues of the intestine, muscle, gill, stomach, brain and liver in adult males of A. tropicus from reared in captivity through three BestKeeper, geNorm and NormFinder algorithms. Based on our results we can conclude that in the three BestKeeper, NormFinder and geNorm algorithms, the most stable genes are ef1, followed by 18s rrna and actb where the gene stability will depend on specific tissue to analyze in tropical gar A. tropicus adults.