Differential transcriptome analysis reveals genes related to cold tolerance in seabuckthorn carpenter moth, Eogystia hippophaecolus

Abstract

Seabuckthorn carpenter moth, Eogystia hippophaecolus (Lepidoptera: Cossidae), is an important pest of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides), which is a shrub that has significant ecological and economic value in China. E. hippophaecolus is highly cold tolerant, but limited studies have been conducted to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying its cold resistance. Here we sequenced the E. hippophaecolus transcriptome using RNA-Seq technology and performed de novo assembly from the short paired-end reads. We investigated the larval response to cold stress by comparing gene expression profiles between treatments. We obtained 118,034 unigenes, of which 22,161 were annotated with gene descriptions, conserved domains, gene ontology terms, and metabolic pathways. These resulted in 57 GO terms and 193 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. By comparing transcriptome profiles for differential gene expression, we identified many differentially expressed proteins and genes, including heat shock proteins and cuticular proteins which have previously been reported to be involved in cold resistance of insects. This study provides a global transcriptome analysis and an assessment of differential gene expression in E. hippophaecolus under cold stress. We found seven differential expressed genes in common between developmental stages, which were verified with qPCR. Our findings facilitate future genomic studies aimed at improving our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the response of insects to low temperatures.

Transcriptome analysis of a social caterpillar, Drepana arcuata: De novo assembly, functional annotation and developmental analysis

“…These were comparable to other larval Lepidoptera transcriptomes in terms of number of transcripts and N50 values (e.g. [39,40]). For a better representation of the complete larval transcriptome we combined the early and late instar sequences to assemble and annotate a reference transcriptome.…”

“…Similar to other larval Lepidoptera, biological regulation and metabolic process (in biological process), catalytic activity and binding (in molecular function) and cell and cell part (in cellular component) were amongst the top subcategories represented (Fig 4) (e.g. [39,41] Lepidoptera are one of the largest insect orders, with >157,000 described species [42]. Many species are of economic significance as forest and agricultural pests, and ecologically significant as pollinators and food sources [43].…”

Comparative Analysis of DNA Methylation Reveals Specific Regulations on Ethylene Pathway in Tomato Fruit

“…This analysis mapped all of the annotated genes to GO terms in the database and counted the number of genes associated with each term. The Perl script was then used to plot the GO functional classification for the UniGenes with a GO term hit to view the distribution of gene functions [ 35 ]. The obtained annotation was enriched and refined using TopGo (R package) with the “elim” method and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test [ 36 ].…”

Transcriptome-Based Analysis Reveals a Crucial Role of BxGPCR17454 in Low Temperature Response of Pine Wood Nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus)

“…Transcriptome analysis revealed that low temperature response process of this plant parasite nematode is also a genetic process regulated by many genes. The past 15 years has witnessed a rapid progress in the understanding of how low temperature influenced the genetic response patterns of many plant pests with RNA sequencing method [21,22,23,24,25,26]. However, little is known about how B. xylophilus , which is also one of the most destructive pine tree pests, genetically responded to low temperature.…”