Department of Applied Biology, Institute of Environmentally-Friendly Agriculture (IEFA), College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea.
Department of Life Science and Biotechnology, College of Natural Sciences, Soonchunhyang University, Asan City 31538, Korea.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Feb 12;21(4):1232. doi: 10.3390/ijms21041232.
Autophagy-related gene-6 (Beclin-1 in mammals) plays a pivotal role in autophagy and is involved in autophagosome formation and autolysosome maturation. In this study, we identified and characterized the autophagy-related gene-6 from () and analyzed its functional role in the survival of the insect against infection. The expression of was studied using qRT-PCR for the assessment of the transcript levels at various developmental stages in the different tissues. The results showed that was highly expressed at the 6-day-old pupal stage. Tissue-specific expression studies revealed that was highly expressed in the hemocytes of late larvae. The induction patterns of in different tissues of larvae were analyzed by injecting , , , or . The intracellular Gram-positive bacteria, solely induced the expression of in hemocytes at 9 h-post-injection, whilst in the fat body and gut, bimodal expression times were observed. RNAi-mediated knockdown of the transcripts, followed by a challenge with microbes, showed a significant reduction in larval survival rate against . Taken together, our results suggest that Atg6 plays an essential role in anti-microbial defense against intracellular bacteria.
自噬相关基因 6（哺乳动物中的 Beclin-1）在自噬中发挥关键作用，参与自噬体形成和自溶酶体成熟。在这项研究中，我们从 () 中鉴定和表征了自噬相关基因 6，并分析了其在昆虫抗感染生存中的功能作用。使用 qRT-PCR 研究了 的表达，以评估不同发育阶段不同组织中的转录水平。结果表明，在 6 日龄蛹期表达水平较高。组织特异性表达研究表明，在晚期幼虫的血细胞中表达水平较高。通过注射 、 、 或 分析了 幼虫不同组织中 的诱导模式。细胞内革兰氏阳性菌 仅在 9 小时后诱导血细胞中 的表达，而在脂肪体和肠道中观察到双峰表达时间。用微生物进行 转录本的 RNAi 介导敲低后，幼虫对 的存活率显著降低。总之，我们的研究结果表明，Atg6 在针对细胞内细菌的抗微生物防御中起着至关重要的作用。
