Department of Animal and Food Science, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States of America.
Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Sep 23;16(9):e0255660. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0255660. eCollection 2021.
Nicrophorus is a genus of beetles that bury and transform small vertebrate carcasses into a brood ball coated with their oral and anal secretions to prevent decay and that will serve as a food source for their young. Nicrophorus pustulatus is an unusual species with the ability to overtake brood of other burying beetles and whose secretions, unlike other Nicrophorus species, has been reported not to exhibit antimicrobial properties. This work aims to better understand how the presence or absence of a food source influences the expression of genes involved in the feeding process of N. pustulatus. To achieve that, total RNA was extracted from pooled samples of salivary gland tissue from N. pustulatus and sequenced using an Illumina platform. The resulting reads were used to assemble a de novo transcriptome using Trinity. Duplicates with more than 95% similarity were removed to obtain a "unigene" set. Annotation of the unigene set was done using the Trinotate pipeline. Transcript abundance was determined using Kallisto and differential gene expression analysis was performed using edgeR. A total of 651 genes were found to be differentially expressed, including 390 upregulated and 261 downregulated genes in fed insects compared to starved. Several genes upregulated in fed beetles are associated with the insect immune response and detoxification processes with only one transcript encoding for the antimicrobial peptide (AMP) defensin. These results confirm that N. pustulatus does not upregulate the production of genes encoding AMPs during feeding. This study provides a snapshot of the changes in gene expression in the salivary glands of N. pustulatus following feeding while providing a well described transcriptome for the further analysis of this unique burying beetle.
尼克罗佛勒斯是一个甲虫属，它会埋葬和转化小型脊椎动物的尸体，将其转化为一个带有口腔和肛门分泌物的育雏球，以防止腐烂，并为其幼虫提供食物来源。尼克罗佛勒斯脓疱是一种不寻常的物种，它有能力接管其他埋葬甲虫的育雏球，并且与其他尼克罗佛勒斯物种不同，其分泌物据报道不具有抗菌特性。这项工作旨在更好地了解食物来源的存在或缺失如何影响尼克罗佛勒斯脓疱参与取食过程的基因表达。为了实现这一目标，从尼克罗佛勒斯脓疱的唾液腺组织的混合样本中提取总 RNA，并使用 Illumina 平台进行测序。使用 Trinity 对产生的读数进行从头组装转录组。去除相似度超过 95%的重复序列以获得“unigene”集。使用 Trinotate 管道对 unigene 集进行注释。使用 Kallisto 确定转录物丰度，并使用 edgeR 进行差异基因表达分析。总共发现 651 个基因表达差异，与饥饿相比，喂食昆虫中有 390 个上调和 261 个下调基因。在喂食的甲虫中上调的几个基因与昆虫免疫反应和解毒过程有关，只有一个转录本编码抗菌肽（AMP）防御素。这些结果证实，尼克罗佛勒斯脓疱在取食过程中不会上调编码 AMP 的基因的产生。本研究提供了尼克罗佛勒斯脓疱唾液腺在取食后基因表达变化的快照，同时为进一步分析这种独特的埋葬甲虫提供了一个描述良好的转录组。
