scholarly journals Comparative Genomics Provide Insights Into Function and Evolution of Odorant Binding Proteins in Cydia pomonella

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Huang ◽  
Xue Zhang ◽  
Dongfeng He ◽  
Qiang Wu ◽  
Rui Tang ◽  
...  

Insect olfaction is vital for foraging, mating, host-seeking, and avoidance of predators/pathogens. In insects, odorant binding proteins (OBPs) are involved in transporting hydrophobic odor molecules from the external environment to receptor neurons. The codling moth, Cydia pomonella, one of the most destructive insect fruit pests, causes enormous economic losses. However, little is known about the number, variety, gains and losses, and evolution of OBP genes in C. pomonella. Here we report the identification of 40 OBPs in C. pomonella, most (75%) of which are classic OBPs, using genomic and transcriptomic analyses. Two OBP genes were lost in C. pomonella relative to possible distant ancestor in Lepidoptera lineage based on an analysis of gene gains and losses. The phylogenetic tree and chromosome location showed that the expansion of OBP genes mainly resulted from tandem duplications, as the CpomGOBP2 gene was duplicated twice along with loss of CpomPBPB. Two positive selection sites of the CpomGOBP1 gene were identified while other OBP genes evolved under purifying selection. Our results provide fundamental knowledge of OBP genes allowing further study of their function in C. pomonella.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Guo ◽  
Ping-Ping Guo ◽  
Ya-Lan Sun ◽  
Ling-Qiao Huang ◽  
Chen-Zhu Wang

AbstractHelicoverpa armigera utilizes (Z)-11-hexadecenal (Z11-16:Ald) as its major sex pheromone component. Three pheromone binding proteins (PBPs) and two general odorant binding proteins (GOBPs) are abundantly expressed in male antennae of H. armigera. However, their precise roles in the olfactory detection of Z11-16:Ald remain enigmatic. To answer this question, we first synthesized the antibody against HarmOR13, a pheromone receptor (PR) primarily responding to Z11-16:Ald and mapped the local associations between PBPs / GOBPs and HarmOR13. Immunostaining showed that HarmPBPs and HarmGOBPs were localized in the supporting cells of sensilla trichodea and sensilla basiconica respectively. In particular, HarmPBP1 and HarmPBP2 were colocalized in the cells surrounding the olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) expressing HarmOR13. Next, using two noninterfering binary expression tools, we heterologously expressed HarmPBP1, HarmPBP2 and HarmOR13 in Drosophila T1 sensilla to validate the functional interplay between PBPs and HarmOR13. We found that the addition of HarmPBP1 or HarmPBP2 significantly increased the sensitivity of HarmOR13 to Z11-16:Ald. However, the presence of either HarmPBP1 or HarmPBP2 was ineffective to change the tuning breadth of HarmOR13. Taken together, our results support the idea that PBPs are contributors to the peripheral olfactory sensitivity but do not affect the selectivity. Lastly, we discovered that HarmOR13 and the Drosophila OR67d employed a similar coding mechanism to detect pheromones, suggesting that pheromone detection across different insect orders appears to co-opt a conserved molecular principle to recognize pheromone ligands.


BMC Genomics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Yuan ◽  
Huihui Chang ◽  
Lina Zhao ◽  
Chao Yang ◽  
Yuan Huang

Abstract Background The sophisticated insect olfactory system plays an important role in recognizing external odors and enabling insects to adapt to environment. Foraging, host seeking, mating, ovipositing and other forms of chemical communication are based on olfaction, which requires the participation of multiple olfactory genes. The exclusive evolutionary trend of the olfactory system in Orthoptera insects is an excellent model for studying olfactory evolution, but limited olfaction research is available for these species. The olfactory-related genes of Ceracris nigricornis Walker (Orthoptera: Acrididae), a severe pest of bamboos, have not yet been reported. Results We sequenced and analyzed the transcriptomes from different tissues of C. nigricornis and obtained 223.76 Gb clean data that were assembled into 43,603 unigenes with an N50 length of 2235 bp. Among the transcripts, 66.79% of unigenes were annotated. Based on annotation and tBLASTn results, 112 candidate olfactory-related genes were identified for the first time, including 20 odorant-binding proteins (OBPs), 10 chemosensory-binding proteins (CSPs), 71 odorant receptors (ORs), eight ionotropic receptors (IRs) and three sensory neuron membrane proteins (SNMPs). The fragments per kilobase per million mapped fragments (FPKM) values showed that most olfactory-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were enriched in the antennae, and these results were confirmed by detecting the expression of olfactory-related genes with quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Among these antennae-enriched genes, some were sex-biased, indicating their different roles in the olfactory system of C. nigricornis. Conclusions This study provides the first comprehensive list and expression profiles of olfactory-related genes in C. nigricornis and a foundation for functional studies of these olfactory-related genes at the molecular level.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui-Ru Jia ◽  
Lin-Lin Niu ◽  
Yu-Feng Sun ◽  
Yong-Qiang Liu ◽  
Kong-Ming Wu

Abstract Aphidophagous syrphids (Diptera: Syrphidae) are important insects in agroecosystems for pollination and biological control. Insect chemoreception is essential for these processes and for insect survival and reproduction; however, molecular determinants is not well understood for these beneficial insects. Here, we used recent transcriptome data for the common hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus, to characterize key molecular components of chemoreception: odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) and chemosensory proteins (CSPs). Six EbalCSPs and 44 EbalOBPs were cloned from this species, and sequence analysis showed that most share the characteristic hallmarks of their protein family, including a signal peptide and conserved cysteine signature. Some regular patterns and key conserved motifs of OBPs and CSPs in Diptera were identified using the online tool MEME. Motifs were also compared among the three OBP subgroups. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that most of these chemosensory genes were expressed in chemosensory organs, suggesting these genes have chemoreceptive functions. An overall comparison of the Ka/Ks values of orthologous genes in E. balteatus and another predatory hoverfly species to analyze the evolution of these olfactory genes showed that OBPs and CSPs are under strong purifying selection. Overall, our results provide a molecular basis for further exploring the chemosensory mechanisms of E. balteatus, and consequently, may help us to understand the tritrophic interactions among plants, herbivorous insects, and natural enemies.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 559-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen F. Garczynski ◽  
Brad S. Coates ◽  
Thomas R. Unruh ◽  
Scott Schaeffer ◽  
Derick Jiwan ◽  
...  

Heliyon ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. e06427
Author(s):  
Haixia Zhan ◽  
Du Li ◽  
Youssef Dewer ◽  
Changying Niu ◽  
Fengqi Li ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1019-1030 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ling Wang ◽  
Ying‐Dong Bi ◽  
Ming Liu ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Miao Liu ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 787-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Diogo M. Vidal ◽  
Zainulabeuddin Syed ◽  
Yuko Ishida ◽  
Walter S. Leal

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