Cao Song, Huang Tianyu, Shen Jie, Liu Yang, Wang Guirong
State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China.
Department of Entomology and MOA Key Lab of Pest Monitoring and Green Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
Front Physiol. 2020 Apr 30;11:413. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.00413. eCollection 2020.
The Lepidoptera is the second largest insect order, which has the most extensive knowledge of sex pheromones and mechanisms of pheromone communication since the identification of the first insect pheromone in . In the past 15 years, pheromone receptors have been identified and functionally characterized in many moth species. HarmOR14 is a typical pheromone receptor of which showed no response to the tested pheromones in oocyte expression system, but its orthologous gene in , HvirOR14 could be activated by pheromones in the same expression system. To assess the possible functions of OR14 , in this study, we knocked out this gene using CRISPR/Cas9 system and compared the mating behaviors and EAG response to pheromones between the wild type and mutant strains. Our results showed that OR14 mutants did not affect the mating rate or the EAG response to pheromones but could prolong the mating duration and change the mating time in undefined manners, which extends our understanding to this kind of pheromone receptors.
鳞翅目是第二大昆虫目，自从首次鉴定昆虫信息素以来，它对性信息素及信息素通讯机制的了解最为广泛。在过去15年里，已经在许多蛾类物种中鉴定出信息素受体并对其进行了功能表征。HarmOR14是一种典型的信息素受体，在卵母细胞表达系统中对测试的信息素无反应，但其在棉铃虫中的直系同源基因HvirOR14在相同的表达系统中可被信息素激活。为了评估OR14的可能功能，在本研究中，我们使用CRISPR/Cas9系统敲除了该基因，并比较了野生型和突变株之间的交配行为以及对信息素的触角电位（EAG）反应。我们的结果表明，OR14突变体不影响交配率或对信息素的EAG反应，但可延长交配持续时间并以不确定的方式改变交配时间，这扩展了我们对这类信息素受体的理解。
