Department of Biology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, 33146, USA.
Boyce Thompson Institute, 533 Tower Road, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
Sci Rep. 2019 Dec 11;9(1):18904. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-54488-1.
Like all organisms, aphids, plant sap-sucking insects that house a bacterial endosymbiont called Buchnera, are members of a species interaction network. Ecological interactions across such networks can result in phenotypic change in network members mediated by molecular signals, like microRNAs. Here, we interrogated small RNA data from the aphid, Myzus persicae, to determine the source of reads that did not map to the aphid or Buchnera genomes. Our analysis revealed that the pattern was largely explained by reads that mapped to the host plant, Brassica oleracea, and a facultative symbiont, Regiella. To start elucidating the function of plant small RNA in aphid gut, we annotated 213 unique B. oleracea miRNAs; 32/213 were present in aphid gut as mature and star miRNAs. Next, we predicted targets in the B. oleracea and M. persicae genomes for these 32 plant miRNAs. We found that plant targets were enriched for genes associated with transcription, while the distribution of targets in the aphid genome was similar to the functional distribution of all genes in the aphid genome. We discuss the potential of plant miRNAs to regulate aphid gene expression and the mechanisms involved in processing, export and uptake of plant miRNAs by aphids.
与所有生物一样，吸食植物汁液的蚜虫（其体内有一种名为 Buchnera 的细菌内共生体）是物种相互作用网络中的成员。通过分子信号（如 microRNA）介导，这种网络中的生态相互作用会导致网络成员发生表型变化。在这里，我们研究了蚜虫 Myzus persicae 的小 RNA 数据，以确定无法映射到蚜虫或 Buchnera 基因组的reads 的来源。我们的分析表明，这种模式在很大程度上可以通过映射到宿主植物甘蓝和兼性共生菌 Regiella 的reads 来解释。为了开始阐明植物小 RNA 在蚜虫肠道中的功能，我们对 213 个独特的甘蓝 miRNA 进行了注释；其中 32/213 以成熟和星 miRNA 的形式存在于蚜虫肠道中。接下来，我们预测了这些 32 种植物 miRNA 在甘蓝和 M. persicae 基因组中的靶标。我们发现植物靶标富集了与转录相关的基因，而在蚜虫基因组中的靶标分布与蚜虫基因组中所有基因的功能分布相似。我们讨论了植物 miRNAs 调节蚜虫基因表达的潜力，以及蚜虫处理、输出和摄取植物 miRNAs 所涉及的机制。
