Surprisingly, despite notable segregation of blank- and 11KT-implanted silver females by MDS, target gene expression in muscle changed little between both groups; only relative ara expression was different between both experimental groups, and although highly significant ( F 1,10 = 13.098, P = 0.005), fold-change was modest ( ara mRNA levels in 11KT-treated eels were 74% those of controls).
For a third gene, diacylglycerol lipase β , a positive trend ( P = 0.086) was evident (Table 3 ).
Experimental increases in 11KT levels were reflected in near-significant main effects on HSI ( F 3,20 = 2.258, P = 0.113; Fig. 2 B) and GSI ( F 3,20 = 3.010, P = 0.054; Fig. 2 C), but less so on oocyte diameter ( F 3,20 = 0.561, P = 0.647; Fig. 2 D); moreover, when defining dose as a continuous, rather than as a fixed variable, significant associations between implant dose and HSI ( R 2 = 0.19; P = 0.033) and GSI ( R 2 = 0.29; P = 0.007) were found (see Fig. 2 B and C).