Abstract

While trade-offs between flight capability and reproduction is a common phenomenon in wing dimorphic insects, the molecular basis is largely unknown. In this study, we examined the transcriptomic differences between winged and wingless morphs of cotton aphids, Aphis gossypii, using a tag-based digital gene expression (DGE) approach. Ultra high-throughput Illumina sequencing generated 5.30 and 5.39 million raw tags, respectively, from winged and wingless A. gossypii DGE libraries. We identified 1,663 differentially expressed transcripts, among which 58 were highly expressed in the winged A. gossypii, whereas 1,605 expressed significantly higher in the wingless morphs. Bioinformatics tools, including Gene Ontology, Cluster of Orthologous Groups, euKaryotic Orthologous Groups and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, were used to functionally annotate these transcripts. In addition, 20 differentially expressed transcripts detected by DGE were validated by the quantitative real-time PCR. Comparative transcriptomic analysis of sedentary (wingless) and migratory (winged) A. gossyii not only advances our understanding of the trade-offs in wing dimorphic insects, but also provides a candidate molecular target for the genetic control of this agricultural insect pest.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-19-2014

Notes/Citation Information

Published in International Journal of Biological Sciences, v. 10, no. 3, p. 257-267.

© Ivyspring International Publisher. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Reproduction is permitted for personal, noncommercial use, provided that the article is in whole, unmodified, and properly cited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.7150/ijbs.7629

Funding Information

This research was supported by the National Science & Technology Pillar Program (2012BAD19B05). Xiaowei Yang was supported by a start-up fund to Zhou and College of Agriculture, University of Kentucky. The granting agencies have no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Related Content

The accession numbers for DGE libraries derived from sedentary and migratory morphs of cotton aphids, Aphis gossypii, are SRX246107 and SRX242773, respectively.

ijbsv10p0257s1.xlsx (6879 kB)
Table S1-S4, and Fig. S1-S2.

Included in

Entomology Commons

Share

COinS