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Transcriptome analyses suggest a novel hypothesis for whitefly adaptation to tobacco.

ABSTRACT: The adaptation of herbivorous insects to various host plants facilitates the spread and outbreak of many important invasive pests, however, the molecular mechanisms that underneath this process are poorly understood. In the past three decades, two species of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci complex, Middle East-Asia Minor 1 and Mediterranean, have invaded many countries. Their rapid and widespread invasions are partially due to their ability to infest a wide range of host plants. In this study, we determined the transcriptome and phenotypic changes of one Mediterranean whitefly population during its adaptation to tobacco, an unsuitable host plant. After several generations on tobacco, whiteflies showed increased survival and fecundity. High-throughput RNA sequencing showed that genes involved in muscle contraction and carbohydrate metabolism were significantly up-regulated after adaptation. Whiteflies reared on tobacco were further found to have increased body volume and muscle content and be trapped by tobacco trichomes in a lower frequency. On the other hand, gene expression in endosymbionts of whitefly did not change significantly after adaptation, which is consistent with the lack of cis-regulatory element on endosymbiont genomes. Over all, our data suggested that higher body volume and strengthened muscle might help whiteflies overcome physical barriers and survive on tobacco.

SUBMITTER: Xia WQ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5608870 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Transcriptome analyses suggest a novel hypothesis for whitefly adaptation to tobacco.

Xia Wen-Qiang WQ Wang Xin-Ru XR Liang Yan Y Liu Shu-Sheng SS Wang Xiao-Wei XW

Scientific reports 20170921 1

The adaptation of herbivorous insects to various host plants facilitates the spread and outbreak of many important invasive pests, however, the molecular mechanisms that underneath this process are poorly understood. In the past three decades, two species of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci complex, Middle East-Asia Minor 1 and Mediterranean, have invaded many countries. Their rapid and widespread invasions are partially due to their ability to infest a wide range of host plants. In this study, we de ...[more]

PMID: 28935950

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Project description:Sclerotinia sclerotiorum is a serious pathogen of numerous crops around the world. The major virulence factor of this pathogen is oxalic acid (OA). Mutants that cannot produce OA do not cause disease, and plants that express enzymes that degrade OA, such as oxalate oxidase (OxO), are very resistant to S. sclerotiorum. To examine the effect of OA on plants, we infiltrated soybean leaves with 5 mm OA and examined the gene expression changes at 2 h post-infiltration. By comparing the gene expression levels between leaves of a transgenic soybean carrying an OxO gene (OxO) and its parent AC Colibri (AC) infiltrated with OA (pH 2.4) or water (pH 2.4 or 5.5), we were able to compare the effects of OA dependent or independent of its pH. Gene expression by microarray analysis identified 2390 genes that showed changes in expression, as determined using an overall F-test P-value cut-off of 0.001. The additional requirement that at least one pairwise t-test false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected P value should be less than 0.001 reduced the list of the most highly significant differentially expressed genes to 1054. Independent of pH, OA altered the expression levels of 78 genes, with ferritin showing the strongest induction by OA. The combination of OA plus its low pH caused 1045 genes (99% of all significant genes) to be differentially expressed, with many of the up-regulated genes being related to basal defence, such as genes of the phenylpropanoid pathway and various cytochrome P450s. RNA-seq was also conducted on four samples: OxO and AC genotypes infiltrated with either OA pH 2.4 or water pH 2.4. The RNA-seq analysis also identified ferritin paralogues as being strongly induced by OA. As the expression of ferritin, a gene that encodes for an iron storage protein, is induced by free iron, these results suggest that S. sclerotiorum benefits from the ability of OA to free iron from plant proteins, as this induces host cell death, and also allows the uptake and assimilation of the iron for its own metabolic needs.

Project description:BackgroundGenomic divergence between invasive and native species may provide insight into the molecular basis underlying specific characteristics that drive the invasion and displacement of closely related species. In this study, we sequenced the transcriptome of an indigenous species, Asia II 3, of the Bemisia tabaci complex and compared its genetic divergence with the transcriptomes of two invasive whiteflies species, Middle East Asia Minor 1 (MEAM1) and Mediterranean (MED), respectively.ResultsMore than 16 million reads of 74 base pairs in length were obtained for the Asia II 3 species using the Illumina sequencing platform. These reads were assembled into 52,535 distinct sequences (mean size: 466 bp) and 16,596 sequences were annotated with an E-value above 10-5. Protein family comparisons revealed obvious diversification among the transcriptomes of these species suggesting species-specific adaptations during whitefly evolution. On the contrary, substantial conservation of the whitefly transcriptomes was also evident, despite their differences. The overall divergence of coding sequences between the orthologous gene pairs of Asia II 3 and MEAM1 is 1.73%, which is comparable to the average divergence of Asia II 3 and MED transcriptomes (1.84%) and much higher than that of MEAM1 and MED (0.83%). This is consistent with the previous phylogenetic analyses and crossing experiments suggesting these are distinct species. We also identified hundreds of highly diverged genes and compiled sequence identify data into gene functional groups and found the most divergent gene classes are Cytochrome P450, Glutathione metabolism and Oxidative phosphorylation. These results strongly suggest that the divergence of genes related to metabolism might be the driving force of the MEAM1 and Asia II 3 differentiation. We also analyzed single nucleotide polymorphisms within the orthologous gene pairs of indigenous and invasive whiteflies which are helpful for the investigation of association between allelic and phenotypes.ConclusionsOur data present the most comprehensive sequences for the indigenous whitefly species Asia II 3. The extensive comparisons of Asia II 3, MEAM1 and MED transcriptomes will serve as an invaluable resource for revealing the genetic basis of whitefly invasion and the molecular mechanisms underlying their biological differences.

Project description:BackgroundCold is one of the main abiotic stresses that severely affect plant growth and development, and crop productivity as well. Transcriptional changes during cold stress have already been intensively studied in various plant species. However, the gene networks involved in the regulation of differential cold tolerance between tobacco varieties with contrasting cold resistance are quite limited.ResultsHere, we conducted multiple time-point transcriptomic analyses using Tai tobacco (TT, cold susceptibility) and Yan tobacco (YT, cold resistance) with contrasting cold responses. We identified similar DEGs in both cultivars after comparing with the corresponding control (without cold treatment), which were mainly involved in response to abiotic stimuli, metabolic processes, kinase activities. Through comparison of the two cultivars at each time point, in contrast to TT, YT had higher expression levels of the genes responsible for environmental stresses. By applying Weighted Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis (WGCNA), we identified two main modules: the pink module was similar while the brown module was distinct between the two cultivars. Moreover, we obtained 100 hub genes, including 11 important transcription factors (TFs) potentially involved in cold stress, 3 key TFs in the brown module and 8 key TFs in the pink module. More importantly, according to the genetic regulatory networks (GRNs) between TFs and other genes or TFs by using GENIE3, we identified 3 TFs (ABI3/VP1, ARR-B and WRKY) mainly functioning in differential cold responses between two cultivars, and 3 key TFs (GRAS, AP2-EREBP and C2H2) primarily involved in cold responses.ConclusionCollectively, our study provides valuable resources for transcriptome- based gene network studies of cold responses in tobacco. It helps to reveal how key cold responsive TFs or other genes are regulated through network. It also helps to identify the potential key cold responsive genes for the genetic manipulation of tobacco cultivars with enhanced cold tolerance in the future.

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Transcriptome analyses suggest a novel hypothesis for whitefly adaptation to tobacco.

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Transcriptome analyses suggest a novel hypothesis for whitefly adaptation to tobacco.

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