Fig. 6: Gdf6Y leads to the specific regulation of certain genes independent of the targeted cell’s identity.

a Heatmap of DEGs (FDR < 0.05) between murine Sertoli-like TM4 cells transfected with a gdf6Y expression plasmid (n = 6) and TM4 cells transfected with either a gdf6Y mutant variant (gdf6Y^del9, n = 5) expression plasmid or an empty vector (EV, n = 6). Genes of the TGF-beta signaling pathway are boxed. b Overrepresentation analysis (ORA) of KEGG pathways within the 42 DEGs identified in TM4 cells. FDR – false discovery rate. c Overlap of the up- or downregulated DEGs identified in TM4 cells with those identified in human HeLa cells. The common genes are highlighted in red (upregulated genes) or blue (the downregulated gene) in (a). d RT-qPCR analyses of the expression of id1 and zfp36l2 in female (XX, n = 8) and male (XY, n = 4) embryos at 10 dpf (stage 4) or gonads of 3 months old females (XX, n = 7), males (XY, n = 5), and phenofemales (GRZ-gdf6Y^del9 XY*, n = 7), respectively. Two-tailed Welch’s t-test (id1) or Welch’s ANOVA and Dunnett’s T3 multiple comparisons test (zfp36l2). e RT-qPCR analyses of female marker genes in trunks of uninjected (n = 6 each) and indel-negative (XX, n = 3; XY, n = 4) females and males and id1⁻ CRISPants of both sexes (XX, n = 5; XY, n = 7) at 0 dph. Welch’s ANOVA and Dunnett’s T3 multiple comparisons test. f RT-qPCR analyses of female marker genes in trunks of uninjected (n = 9 each) and indel-negative (n = 3 each) females and males and zfp36l2⁻ CRISPants of both sexes (XX, n = 8; XY, n = 11) at 0 dph. Kruskal–Wallis test and Dunn’s multiple comparisons test. d–f Mean with standard deviation. P-values < 0.05 are displayed. a, b, d–f Source data are provided as a Source Data file.