ABSTRACT: To identify genes and metabolic pathways involved in the heat-stress response, digital gene expression analysis was performed on the midgut of thermotolerant silkworm variety ‘932’ and thermosensitive variety ‘HY’ after exposure to high temperature (932T and HYT). Deep sequencing yielded 6,211,484, 5,898,028, 5,870,395, and 6,088,303 reads for the 932, 932T, HY, and HYT samples, respectively. After filtering adaptor sequences and removing low-quality tags, 6,139,297, 5,828,615, 5,799,074, and 6,005,746 clean tags remained, respectively. The annotated genes associated with these tags numbered 4357, 4378, 4296, and 4658 for the 932, 932T, HY, and HYT samples, respectively. In HY-vs-932, 932-vs-932T, and HY-vs-HYT comparisons, 561, 316, and 281 differentially expressed genes were identified, which could be assigned to 179, 140, and 123 biological pathways, respectively.
