Unveiling the roles of metabolites and gene regulation in sexual maturation and spawning of blunt snout bream (Megalobrama amblycephala)

The endocrine changes and gene regulation patterns responding to sexual maturation and spawning have not been clarified in fish species. To identify the potential metabolites and genes regulating the ovarian development and spawning, we employed the approach integrating the metabolic and RNA-seq techniques to investigate the metabolites and candidate genes participating in the sexual maturation and spawning of female blunt snout bream Megalobrama amblycephala. This data descriptor provides metabolic and transcriptomic information for the blood tissue at different developmental stages of female M. amblycephala. With UPLC-MS/MS method, a total of 763 and 173 differential ions were detected from the pairwise comparisons of the four groups in positive and negative mode, respectively. Meanwhile, 191.65 Mb raw reads were generated using illumina Hiseq platform with 50 bp single-end strategy. We then analysed the differential metabolites and differentially expressed genes and their functions among the four groups. This data descriptor will contribute to understanding the dynamics of metabolites and gene regulation in ovarian development and spawning and reuse to support physiological and genetic researches in aquaculture. In this study, we integrated transcriptomic and metabolomics approaches to comprehensively detect the metabolites and gene expression profiling in blood tissue of M. amblycephala from four groups, i.e., 1-year-old immature females, 2-year-old immature females, 2-year-old mature females and the females after successful spawning, each have two replicates.