Rewiring of skin and muscle transcriptomes upon a transposon insertion in the pmel locus of Mozambique tilapia

Melanocyte protein gene, pmel plays a crucial role in melanin pigmentation. In Mozambique tilapia (Oreochromis mossambicus), a transposon insertion into the three prime untranslated region of pmel silences this gene and brings about multiple phenotypic changes including loss of melanin (golden phenotype), reduced growth performance and/or increased locomotion. To understand the mechanisms of pmel regulating these phenotypes, we sequenced the transcriptomes of both skin and muscle samples between wildtype and mutant genotypes.