Functional Sex Reversal in Adult Gonochoristic Teleosts is Mediated by Ovarian Germline Stem Cell Plasticity and Somatic Cell Transdifferentiation
Yang Yang, Liechao Yu, Wanchang Zhang, Gary Wessel, Ruiyi Chen, Weihua Hu, Dongdong Xu · 2026
Read Functional Sex Reversal in Adult Gonochoristic Teleosts is Mediated by Ovarian Germline Stem Cell Plasticity and Somatic Cell Transdifferentiation by Yang Yang, Liechao Yu, Wanchang Zhang, Gary Wessel, Ruiyi Chen, Weihua Hu, Dongdong Xu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13477260.txt.
Description
Yang Yang and co-authors (2026) demonstrate complete sex reversal in an adult fish, the yellow drum. Sex in vertebrates is usually treated as fixed once development ends. Many fishes bend that rule, but a fully working reversal in an adult with separate sexes had not been shown. In this species, females turned into functioning males. The team traced three mechanisms behind the change.
First, the eggs themselves guard the ovary's identity; remove that guard and change can begin. Second, the ovary's germline stem cells keep a hidden capacity to make sperm, and they used it. Third, the ovary's supporting cells fully switched identity, from the female granulosa and theca types to the male Sertoli and Leydig types. The authors call this the first proof of functional female-to-male reversal in an adult gonochoristic vertebrate. They offer the fish as a new model for studying sexual plasticity.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yang Yang, Liechao Yu, Wanchang Zhang, Gary Wessel, Ruiyi Chen, Weihua Hu, Dongdong Xu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 52 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |