Transcriptome Profiling of Sexual Maturation and Mating in the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, Ceratitis capitata

Abstract

Sexual maturation and mating in insects are generally accompanied by major physiological and behavioural changes. Many of these changes are related to the need to locate a mate and subsequently, in the case of females, to switch from mate searching to oviposition behaviour. The prodigious reproductive capacity of the Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, is one of the factors that has led to its success as an invasive pest species. To identify the molecular changes related to maturation and mating status in male and female medfly, a microarray-based gene expression approach was used to compare the head transcriptomes of sexually immature, mature virgin, and mated individuals. Attention was focused on the changes in abundance of transcripts related to reproduction, behaviour, sensory perception of chemical stimulus, and immune system processes. Broad transcriptional changes were recorded during female maturation, while post-mating transcriptional changes in females were, by contrast, modest. In male medfly, transcriptional changes were consistent both during maturation and as a consequence of mating. Of particular note was the lack of the mating-induced immune responses that have been recorded for Drosophila melanogaster, that may be due to the different reproductive strategies of these species. This study, in addition to increasing our understanding of the molecular machinery behind maturation and mating in the medfly, has identified important gene targets that might be useful in the future management of this pest.

The Transcriptomic Basis of Oviposition Behaviour in the Parasitoid Wasp Nasonia vitripennis

“…These transcriptomic approaches offer a means of directly exploring which genes are associated with complex phenotypes such as behaviour, and experiments can reveal changes in gene regulation associated with changes in those phenotypes. For instance, recent work has revealed some of the genes and genetic networks associated with changes in female behaviour after mating in species of Drosophila [24]–[30], the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata [31], the honey bee Apis mellifera [32], [33], and the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis (R. Watt, U. Trivedi, T.J. Park, M. Blaxter and D.M. Shuker, unpublished data).…”

Mating Changes Sexually Dimorphic Gene Expression in the Seed Beetle Callosobruchus maculatus

“…2016b). A handful of genes are known to change expression following mating in male D. melanogaster (Ellis and Carney 2010) and Ceratitis capitata (Gomulski et al. 2012).…”

Transcriptome analysis in Ceratitis capitata to unveil genes involved in ageing-maturation process

“…In our experimental design for the EST libraries construction, the maturation process is more prone to be unveiled, as mating was allowed. Despite this limitation our results could be more realistic as some biological and cellular processes are also modulated by mating status, as demonstrated by Moshitzky et al (2003) or by Gomulski et al (2012). These authors have demonstrated that mating can modulate the biosynthesis of juvenile hormones in medfly females (the male specific serum proteins and peptides are the responsible of down-regulation of the juvenile hormones in the mated females when compared to virgin females of the same age).…”

“…Each consensus sequence was compared to GenBank by blast using tblastx as implemented in NCBI web page to assign gene function (Altschul et al, 1997). Sequences were also compared to those EST (expressed sequence tags) available of C. capitata in dbEST (GenBank: FG068301−FG089553; Gomulski et al, 2012). Gene ontology (GO) was established by assignment of each identified gene function into GO browser.…”