| Title: | Expressional divergences of two desaturase genes determine the opposite ratios of two sex pheromone components in Helicoverpa armigera and Helicoverpa assulta |
| Author(s): | Li RT; Ning C; Huang LQ; Dong JF; Li X; Wang CZ; |
| Address: | "State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. College of Forestry, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China. Department of Entomology and BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Electronic address: czwang@ioz.ac.cn" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.ibmb.2017.09.016 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1879-0240 (Electronic) 0965-1748 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "The sympatric closely related species Helicoverpa armigera and Helicoverpa assulta use 97:3 and 7:93 of (Z)-11-hexadecenal and (Z)-9-hexadecenal, respectively, as their sex pheromone to find/locate correct sex mates. Moreover, (Z)-11-hexadecenyl alcohol and (Z)-9-hexadecenyl alcohol are more abundant in the pheromone gland of H. assulta than in that of H. armigera. To clarify the molecular basis of these differences, we sequenced the pheromone gland transcriptomes of the two species and compared the expression patterns of the candidate enzyme genes involved in the pheromone biosynthetic pathways by FPKM values and quantitative RT-PCR analysis. We found that the desaturase gene LPAQ expressed about 70 times higher in H. armigera than in H. assulta, whereas another desaturase gene NPVE expressed about 60 times higher in H. assulta than in H. armigera. We also observed significantly higher expression of the fatty acyl reductase (FAR) gene FAR1 and the aldehyde reductase (AR) gene AR3 in H. assulta than in H. armigera. Examination of the pheromone glands of the backcross offspring of their hybrids to H. assulta showed a positive linear correlation between the expression level of LPAQ and the amount of Z11-16:Ald and between the expression level of NPVE and the amount of Z9-16:Ald in the pheromone glands. Taken together, these data demonstrate that the expressional divergences of LPAQ and NPVE determine the opposite sex pheromone component ratios in the two species and the divergent expression of FAR1 and AR3 may account for the greater accumulation of alcohols in the pheromone gland of H. assulta" |
| Keywords: | Amino Acid Sequence Animals Fatty Acid Desaturases/*metabolism Female Gene Expression Male Moths/enzymology/*genetics Sex Attractants/*biosynthesis Species Specificity Transcriptome Backcross Desaturase Fatty acyl reductase Helicoverpa armigera Helicoverp; |
| Notes: | "MedlineLi, Rui-Ting Ning, Chao Huang, Ling-Qiao Dong, Jun-Feng Li, Xianchun Wang, Chen-Zhu eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. England 2017/10/08 Insect Biochem Mol Biol. 2017 Nov; 90:90-100. doi: 10.1016/j.ibmb.2017.09.016. Epub 2017 Oct 3" |
