Abstract: Three estrogen receptors (erα, erβ1 and erβ2) of Scatophagus argus were cloned in this study. The lengths of erα, erβ1 and erβ2 were 2621 bp, 2891 bp and 2410 bp, respectinvely, encoding of 635, 560 and 657 arnino avids, corespondingly. The similarity analysis of amino acid sequences showed that ERα， ERβ1 and ERβ2 of Scatophagus argus shared the highest similarity with Dicentrarchus labrax, Acanthopagrus schlegelii and Micropterus salmoides, and the similarity was 91.7%, 89.9% and 88.4%, respectively. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR showed that ERα and ERβ1 were mainly expressed in hypophysis, brain and testis. The high expression of erβ2 was found in the liver, hypophysis and testis, while low expression was found in other tissues. erα expression was higher than erβ1 and erβ2 in these tissues of brain, hypophysis and gonad, but the erβ2 expression in liver was higher contrary to erα. Results of Real-time PCR showed that erα expression significantly increased in sperm maturation period, but erβ1 and erβ2 had highest expression in the early development in testis. In the ovary, estrogen receptor of Scatophagus argus was mainly expressed in oogonium and oocyte with full of yolk. These results demonstrated that the three estrogen receptors have important functions in the development of testis and ovary.

Key words: Scatophagus argus, estrogen receptor； sequence analysis, gene expression