The Gustavus Gene Can Regulate the Fecundity of the Green Peach Aphid, Myzus persicae (Sulzer)

Abstract

Myzus persicae (Sulzer), commonly known as the green peach aphid, is a notorious pest that causes substantial losses to a range of crops and can transmit several plant viruses, including potato virus Y (PVY). Chemical insecticides provide only partial control of this pest and their use is not environmentally sustainable. In recent years, many genes related to growth, development, and reproduction have been used as targets for pest control. These include Gustavus (Gus), a highly conserved gene that has been reported to play an essential part in the genesis of germline cells and, hence, in fecundity in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster. We hypothesized that the Gustavus (Gus) gene was a potential target that could be used to regulate the M. persicae population. In this study, we report the first investigation of an ortholog of Gus in M. persicae, designated MpGus, and describe its role in the fecundity of this insect. First, we identified the MpGus mRNA sequence in the M. persicae transcriptome database, verified its identity with reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and then evaluated the transcription levels of MpGus in M. persicae nymphs of different instars and tissues with real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). To investigate its role in regulating the fecundity of M. persicae, we used RNA interference (RNAi) to silence the expression of MpGus in adult insects; this resulted in a significant reduction in the number of embryos (50.6%, P < 0.01) and newborn nymphs (55.7%, P < 0.01) in the treated aphids compared with controls. Interestingly, MpGus was also significantly downregulated in aphids fed on tobacco plants that had been pre-infected with PVYN, concomitant with a significant reduction (34.1%, P < 0.01) in M. persicae fecundity. Collectively, these data highlight the important role of MpGus in regulating fecundity in M. persicae and indicate that MpGus is a promising RNAi target gene for control of this pest species.

The transcriptome of Icerya aegyptiaca (Hemiptera: Monophlebidae) and comparison with neococcoids reveal genetic clues of evolution in the scale insects

“…The OGs positively selected at the ancestor of neococcoids were significantly enriched in embryo development, chromatin remodeling, and transcription (Figure S6). Among these OGs, OG0004844 was annotated as protein Gustavus (Table 2 ), which has a critical role in the reproductive success of a diverse number of arthropods [ 55 ]. OG0005323 and OG0005533 are related to chromatin and methylation, which are involved in H3K36 and H3K27 methylation respectively and possibly associated with development, gametogenesis and neurogenesis [ 56 – 58 ].…”

Gene Structure-Based Homology Search Identifies Highly Divergent Putative Effector Gene Family

“…The discovery of bicycle genes in other insects opens up the possibility that the function of bicycle genes can be studied in species more amenable to laboratory manipulation. For example, RNAi allows gene knockdown in M. persicae ( Pitino et al, 2011 ; Coleman et al, 2015 ; Mathers et al, 2017 ; Niu et al, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Gao et al, 2021 ; ) and A. pisum ( Han et al, 2006 ; Mutti et al, 2006 , 2008 ; Shakesby et al, 2009 ; Will and Vilcinskas, 2015 ; Vellichirammal et al, 2017 ; Niu et al, 2019 ) and CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis allows gene knockout in A. pisum ( Le Trionnaire et al, 2019 ). Thus, the discovery of many bicycle genes in these species presents new experimental opportunities to uncover the organismal and molecular functions of bicycle genes.…”

Morphometrics and biological characteristics of Pentalonia nigronervosa, the vector of Banana bunchy top virus, living on various Araceous plants species

“…Fecundity was measured as the number of nymphs delivered by an adult female during its reproductive period. During the counting of fecundity, a newly born nymph was taken out from the bottle after being counted (Gao et al, 2021). The counting of the progenies was conducted every 24 hours.…”