Identification of a gustatory receptor tuned to sinigrin in the cabbage butterfly Pieris rapae.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Yang J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8282186 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:High morphological abnormality and mortality rates have been reported in the pale grass blue butterfly, Zizeeria maha, since the Fukushima nuclear accident. However, it remains uncertain if these effects are restricted to this butterfly. Here, we evaluated the effects of ingesting cabbage leaves grown with contaminated soils from Fukushima on the development and hemocytes of the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae. Contaminated cabbage leaves containing various low levels of anthropogenic 134Cs and 137Cs radioactivity (less than natural 40K radioactivity) were fed to larvae from Okinawa, the least contaminated locality in Japan. Negative developmental and morphological effects were detected in the experimental groups. The cesium (but not potassium) radioactivity concentration was negatively correlated with the granulocyte percentage in hemolymph, and the granulocyte percentage was positively correlated with the pupal eclosion rate, the adult achievement rate, and the total normality rate. These results demonstrated that ingesting low-level radiocesium contaminants in Fukushima (but not natural radiopotassium) imposed biologically negative effects on the cabbage white butterfly, as in the pale grass blue butterfly, at both cellular and organismal levels.
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Project description:Nutritional enhancement of crops using genetic engineering can potentially affect herbivorous pests. Recently, oilseed crops have been genetically engineered to produce the long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) at levels similar to that found in fish oil; to provide a more sustainable source of these compounds than is currently available from wild fish capture. We examined some of the growth and development impacts of adding EPA and DHA to an artificial diet of Pieris rapae, a common pest of Brassicaceae plants. We replaced 1% canola oil with EPA: DHA (11:7 ratio) in larval diets, and examined morphological traits and growth of larvae and ensuing adults across 5 dietary treatments. Diets containing increasing amounts of EPA and DHA did not affect developmental phenology, larval or pupal weight, food consumption, nor larval mortality. However, the addition of EPA and DHA in larval diets resulted in progressively heavier adults (F 4, 108 = 6.78; p = 0.011), with smaller wings (p < 0.05) and a higher frequency of wing deformities (R = 0.988; p = 0.001). We conclude that the presence of EPA and DHA in diets of larval P. rapae may alter adult mass and wing morphology; therefore, further research on the environmental impacts of EPA and DHA production on terrestrial biota is advisable.
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Project description:BackgroundAgricultural environments have long presented an opportunity to study evolution in action, and genomic approaches are opening doors for testing hypotheses about adaptation to crops, pesticides, and fertilizers. Here, we begin to develop the cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) as a system to test questions about adaptation to novel, agricultural environments. We focus on a population in the north central United States as a unique case study: here, canola, a host plant, has been grown during the entire flight period of the butterfly over the last three decades.ResultsFirst, we show that the agricultural population has diverged phenotypically relative to a nonagricultural population: when reared on a host plant distantly related to canola, the agricultural population is smaller and more likely to go into diapause than the nonagricultural population. Second, drawing from deep sequencing runs from six individuals from the agricultural population, we assembled the gut transcriptome of this population. Then, we sequenced RNA transcripts from the midguts of 96 individuals from this canola agricultural population and the nonagricultural population in order to describe patterns of genomic divergence between the two. While population divergence is low, 235 genes show evidence of significant differentiation between populations. These genes are significantly enriched for cofactor and small molecule metabolic processes, and many genes also have transporter or catalytic activity. Analyses of population structure suggest the agricultural population contains a subset of the genetic variation in the nonagricultural population.ConclusionsTaken together, our results suggest that adaptation of cabbage whites to an agricultural environment occurred at least in part through selection on standing genetic variation. Both the phenotypic and genetic data are consistent with the idea that this pest has adapted to an abundant and predictable agricultural resource through a narrowing of niche breadth and loss of genetic variants rather than de novo gain of adaptive alleles. The present research develops genomic resources to pave the way for future studies using cabbage whites as a model contributing to our understanding of adaptation to agricultural environments.
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Project description:The eyes of the female small white butterfly, Pieris rapae crucivora, are furnished with three classes of short-wavelength photoreceptors, with sensitivity peaks in the ultraviolet (UV) (lambda(max) = 360 nm), violet (V) (lambda(max) = 425 nm), and blue (B) (lambda(max) = 453 nm) wavelength range. Analyzing the spectral origin of the photoreceptors, we isolated three novel mRNAs encoding opsins corresponding to short-wavelength-absorbing visual pigments. We localized the opsin mRNAs in the retinal tissue and found that each of the short-wavelength-sensitive photoreceptor classes exclusively expresses one of the opsin mRNAs. We, accordingly, termed the visual pigments PrUV, PrV, and PrB, respectively. The eyes of the male small white butterfly also use three classes of short-wavelength photoreceptors that equally uniquely express PrUV, PrV, and PrB. However, whereas the spectral sensitivities of the male photoreceptors with PrUV and PrB closely correspond to those of the female, the male photoreceptor expressing PrV has a double-peaked blue (dB) spectral sensitivity, strongly deviating from the spectral sensitivity of the female V photoreceptor. The male eyes contain a pigment that distinctly fluoresces under blue-violet as well as UV excitation light. It coexists with the dB photoreceptors and presumably acts as a spectral filter with an absorbance spectrum peaking at 416 nm. The narrow-band spectral sensitivity of the male dB photoreceptors probably evolved to improve the discrimination of the different wing colors of male and female P. rapae crucivora in the short-wavelength region of the spectrum.
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Project description:The small white butterfly Pieris rapae is one of the most destructive pests of Brassicaceae. Yet little is understood about its genes involved in development. To facilitate research on P. rapae, we sequenced the transcriptome of P. rapae during six developmental stages, including the egg, three larval stages, the pupa, and the adult. In total, 240 million high-quality reads were obtained. De novo assembly generated 96,069 unigenes with an average length of 1353 nt. Of these, 31,629 unigenes had homologs as determined by a blastx search against the NR database with a cut-off e-value of 10-5. Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins (COG), Gene Ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses were conducted to functionally annotate those genes. Then, 849 genes involved in seven canonical development signaling pathway were identified, including dozens of key genes such as Hippo, Notch, and JAK2. A total of 21,883 differentially expressed (cut-off of 2-fold) unigenes were detected across the developmental stages, most of which were found between the egg and first larval stages. Interestingly, only 34 differentially expressed unigenes, most of which are cuticle protein related genes, were detected with a cut-off of 210-fold. Furthermore, we identified 32 heat shock protein (Hsp) genes that were expressed with complete open reading frames. Based on phylogenetic trees of the Hsp genes, we found that Hsp genes with close evolutionary relationships had similar expression pattern. Additionally, partial pattern recognition receptors genes were found to be developmental regulated. This study provides comprehensive sequence resources for P. rapae and numerous differential expressed genes, and these findings will lay the foundation for future functional genomics studies on this species.
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Project description:Urban areas are increasing globally, providing opportunities for biodiversity researchers to study the process in which species become established in novel, highly disturbed habitats. This ecological process can be understood through analyses of morphological and genetic variation, which can shed light on patterns of neutral and adaptive evolution. Previous studies have shown that urban populations often diverge genetically from non-urban source populations. This could occur due to neutral genetic drift, but an alternative is that selection could lead to allele frequency changes in urban populations. The development of genome scan methods provides an opportunity to investigate these outcomes from samples of genetic variation taken along an urbanization gradient. Here we examine morphological variation in wing size and diversity at neutral amplified fragment length polymorphisms in the butterfly Pieris rapae L. (Lepidoptera, Pieridae) sampled from the center to the periphery of Marseille. We utilize established and novel environmental correlation approaches to scan genetic variation for evidence of selection. We find significant morphological differences in urban populations, as well as weak genetic structure and decreased genetic diversity in urban versus non-urban sites. However, environmental correlation tests provide little support for selection in our dataset. Our comparison of different methods and allele frequency clines suggests that loci identified as significant are false positives. Although there is some indication that selection may be acting on wing size in urban butterflies, genetic analyses suggest P. rapae are undergoing neutral drift.
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Project description:Complex signaling traits such as pheromone profiles can play an important role in the early stages of reproductive isolation between populations. These signals can diverge along multiple trait axes, and signal receivers are often sensitive to subtle differences in signal properties. In the Lepidoptera, prior research has highlighted that natural selection can drive rapid chemical signal divergence, for instance via mate recognition to maintain species boundaries. Much less is known about the occurrence of such changes for predominantly sexually selected chemical signals, such as those released by many male lepidopterans. We evaluated the divergence in male and female wing volatile profiles between two recently isolated subspecies of the pierid butterfly Pieris rapae Linnaeus (Lepidoptera: Pieridae): P. rapae rapae and P. rapae crucivora. In laboratory settings, these subspecies exhibit strong premating isolation, with females rejecting males of the opposite subspecies despite the fact that males direct equivalent courtship effort toward females of either subspecies. Using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, we analyzed the volatile chemical profiles of individual males and females of each subspecies. We find that males of each subspecies differ in their wing volatile profiles, including quantitative differences in a male sex pheromone, ferrulactone. In contrast, female wing volatiles profiles have diverged significantly less. These sex-specific patterns suggest that male chemical profiles may play a role in the observed premating isolation between these two subspecies, providing support for future investigations of sexually selected chemical traits in population divergence.
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Project description:Pieris rapae granulovirus (PrGV) can infect and kill larvae of Pieris rapae, a worldwide and important pest of mustard family crops. The PrGV genome consists of 108,592 bp, is AT rich (66.8%), and is most structurally and organizationally similar to the Choristoneura occidentalis granulovirus genome. Of the predicted 120 open reading frames (ORFs), 32 genes specifically occurred in GVs, including four genes unique to PrGV (Pr9, Pr32, Pr53, and Pr117).
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Project description:The association of cabbage white butterflies (Pieris spec., Lepidoptera: Pieridae) with their glucosinolate-containing host plants represents a well-investigated example of the sequential evolution of plant defenses and insect herbivore counteradaptations. The defensive potential of glucosinolates, a group of amino acid-derived thioglucosides present in plants of the Brassicales order, arises mainly from their rapid breakdown upon tissue disruption resulting in formation of toxic isothiocyanates. Larvae of P. rapae are able to feed exclusively on glucosinolate-containing plants due to expression of a nitrile-specifier protein in their gut which redirects glucosinolate breakdown to the formation of nitriles. The release of equimolar amounts of cyanide upon further metabolism of the benzylglucosinolate-derived nitrile suggests that the larvae are also equipped with efficient means of cyanide detoxification such as β-cyanoalanine synthases or rhodaneses. While insect β-cyanoalanine synthases have recently been identified at the molecular level, no sequence information was available of characterized insect rhodaneses. Here, we identify and characterize two single-domain rhodaneses from P. rapae, PrTST1 and PrTST2. The enzymes differ in their kinetic properties, predicted subcellular localization and expression in P. rapae indicating different physiological roles. Phylogenetic analysis together with putative lepidopteran rhodanese sequences indicates an expansion of the rhodanese family in Pieridae.
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Project description:Acetylcholinesterases (AChEs) are essential for the hydrolysis of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and play crucial roles in the termination of neurotransmission. AChEs are encoded by the ace genes. However, the ace genes from the small white butterfly, Pieris rapae (L.) (Lepidoptera: Pieridae), remained uncharacterized. In this study, two aces (Prace1 and Prace2) were identified from P. rapae. Prace1 encoded a PrAChE1 protein consisting of 694 amino acid residues, and Prace2 encoded the 638-amino-acid PrAChE2. The two identified PrAChEs both had features typical of AChEs, including the catalytic triad, choline-binding sites, an oxyanion hole, an acyl pocket, a peripheral anionic subsite, an FGESAG motif and 14 conserved aromatic amino acids. Phylogenetic analysis showed that Prace1 and Prace2 were clustered into two distinct groups: ace1 and ace2, respectively. The two Praces were distributed on different genomic scaffolds: Prace1 on scaffold 156 and Prace2 on scaffold 430. Additionally, Prace1 consisted of three exons and two introns, whereas Prace2 consisted of six exons and five introns. One amino acid mutation (Gly324Ala) in PrAChE1 and two (Ser291Gly and Ser431Phe) in PrAChE2 were consistent with mutations in other insect AChEs that are associated with insecticide insensitivity. Both Prace1 and Prace2 were highly expressed at the fifth-instar larval stage and in the larval head, and the transcriptional levels of Prace1 were significantly higher than those of Prace2 in all of the tested life stages and tissues. This is the first report characterizing two ace genes in P. rapae. The results pave the way for functional study of these genes.
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