State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.
Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China.
Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Apr 1;24(7):6624. doi: 10.3390/ijms24076624.
Olfactory systems in eusocial insects play a vital role in the discrimination of various chemical cues. Odorant receptors (ORs) are critical for odorant detection, and this family has undergone extensive expansion in ants. In this study, we re-annotated the genes from the most destructive invasive ant species and 2 other Formicidae species, and , with the aim of systematically comparing and analyzing the evolution and the functions of the in ant species, identifying 356, 298, and 306 potential functional , respectively. The evolutionary analysis of these showed that ants had undergone chromosomal rearrangements and that tandem duplication may be the main contributor to the expansion of the gene family in . Our further analysis revealed that 9-exon had biased chromosome localization patterns in all three ant species and that a 9-exon cluster () in was under strong positive selection (Ka/Ks = 1.32). Moreover, we identified 5 genes, namely , , , , and , with high sequence similarity (>70%) to the orthologs in and . An RT-PCR analysis was used to verify the antennal expression levels of these , which showed caste-specific expression. The subsequent analysis of the antennal expression profiles of the of the workers from the polygyne and monogyne social forms indicated that and were expressed at much higher levels in the monogyne workers than in the polygyne workers and that was expressed at higher levels in polygyne workers. Our study has contributed to the identification and analysis of the gene family in ants and expanded the understanding of the evolution and functions of the ORs in Formicidae species.
社会性昆虫的嗅觉系统在识别各种化学线索方面起着至关重要的作用。气味受体（ORs）对于气味的检测至关重要，而这个家族在蚂蚁中经历了广泛的扩张。在这项研究中，我们重新注释了最具破坏性的入侵蚂蚁物种 和另外两种膜翅目物种 和 的 基因，目的是系统地比较和分析 在蚂蚁物种中的进化和功能，分别鉴定出 356、298 和 306 个潜在的功能 。这些 的进化分析表明，蚂蚁经历了染色体重排，串联重复可能是 基因家族在 中扩张的主要原因。我们的进一步分析表明，9 外显子 在所有三种蚂蚁物种中都具有偏向的染色体定位模式，而 中的 9 外显子簇（ ）受到强烈的正选择（Ka/Ks = 1.32）。此外，我们鉴定了 5 个基因，即 、 、 、 和 ，它们与 和 的同源物具有高度的序列相似性（>70%）。RT-PCR 分析用于验证这些 在触角中的表达水平，结果显示出性别特异性表达。随后对来自多型和单型社会形态的 工蚁的触角表达谱进行分析表明， 和 在单型工蚁中的表达水平明显高于多型工蚁，而 在多型工蚁中的表达水平较高。我们的研究有助于鉴定和分析蚂蚁中的 基因家族，并扩展了对膜翅目物种中 ORs 进化和功能的认识。
