Role of 17α-hydroxypregnenolone in the Ovarian Maturation Stages of Scylla olivacea

Production of crustaceans is gaining huge attention in developing countries for domestic use and for export commodities. Accordingly, crab culture has gained oodles of importance within the past few decades because of great demands of live crabs as well as crab products in the export market¹.

For this reason, its production should be amplified and inducing the ovarian maturation for reproduction in crustacean aquaculture is one of the practices that can meet with the market demands. In this regard, one of the methods is using steroid hormones in aquaculture which have been practicing for the past few years.

Most of the hormones are employed for reproductive means and most are for gonad development. Female gonad development is a process that generally refers to the ovarian maturation stage.

However, ovarian maturation is circulated and affected by Vitellogenin Inhibitor Hormones (VIH) which can inhibit the ovarian maturation stage² and steroids hormones including 17α-hydroxy-progesterone (17α-OHP) as well as 17α-hydroxypregnenolone (17α-OHPL) that induce the ovarian maturation stage³.

Accordingly, a novel study was conducted in order to determine the impact of reproductive steroid hormones, 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone with different doses on the ovarian maturation stages of orange mud crab, Scylla olivacea⁴.

This study lasted for 60 days and involved ninety immature female S. olivacea where eighteen immature female S. olivacea acted as a control without the injection, while the other 4 treatments each having 18 immature female orange mud crabs. These were injected laterally in 5th abdominal the segment with different dose of 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone⁴.

At the end of this experiment, scientists found that 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone injection should be evaluating more dosage before being utilized as a practical way to enhance ovarian development in commercial operations.

The crux of the matter are all treatments of 17α-hydroxypregnenolone play a key role in the development of ovarian maturation stage of orange mud crab, Scylla olivacea but out of all the four treatments T2D1 treatment of 17α-hydroxypregnenolone with 0.01 μg BW^–1 dose gave the best results which are able to produce the highest percentage mature ovary stages and having the highest gonad somatic index.

REFERENCES

1. Redzuari, A., M.N. Azra, A.B. Abol-Munafi, Z.A. Aizam, Y.S. Hii and M. Ikhwanuddin, 2012. Effects of feeding regimes on survival, development and growth of blue swimming crab, Portunus pelagicus (Linnaeus, 1758) larvae. World Appl. Sci. J., 18: 472-478.
2. Wilder, M.N., T. Subramoniam and K. Aida, 2002. Progress in Vitellogenesis. In: Reproductive Biology of Invertebrates, Raikhel, A.S. and T.W. Sappington (Eds.). Science Publishers Inc., Plymouth, UK., pp: 131-174.
3. Tsukimura, B., 2001. Crustacean vitellogenesis: Its role in oocyte development. Am. Zool., 41: 465-476.
4. Muhd-Farouk, H., A.B. Abol-Munafi, S. Jasmani and M. Ikhwanuddin, 2014. Effect of steroid hormones 17α-hydroxyprogesterone and 17α-hydroxypregnenolone on ovary external morphology of orange mud crab, Scylla olivacea. Asian J. Cell Biol., 9: 23-28.