Project description:The common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum is a chelicerate model organism for studying developmental mechanisms and their evolution in arthropods. In contrast to the well-studied model insect, Drosophila melanogaster, embryos of the spider undergo patterning in a cellular environment from early stages (at least after the number of the nuclei increase to 16). Use of spider embryos provide new opportunities to understand the evolution of developmental mechanisms underlying arthropod body plans. This analysis aims to generate genome-scale, developmental profiles of gene expression in embryos of the spider P. tepidariorum, which facilitate a wide range of studies using this spider species.
Project description:Generalist arthropod herbivores rapidly adapt to a broad range of host plants. However, the extent of transcriptional reprogramming in the herbivore and its hosts associated with adaptation remains poorly understood. Using the spider mite Tetranychus urticae and tomato as models with available genomic resources, we investigated the reciprocal genome-wide transcriptional changes in both spider mite and tomato as a consequence of mite’s adaptation to tomato We used microarray to assess global gene expression in Solanum lycopersicum cv. Moneymaker upon Tetranychus urticae attack by tomato-adapted and non-adapted spider mite lines.
