Patterns of differential gene expression in adult rotation resistant and wild type western corn rootworm digestive tracts

CHU, C.C.; ZAVALA J.A.; SPENCER, J.; CURZI, M.; FIELDS, C.J.; DRNEVICH, J.; SIEGFRIED, B.D.; SEUFFERHELD, M.

EVOLUTIONARY APPLICATIONS

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2015 vol. 8 p. 692 - 704

1752-4571

The western corn rootworm (WCR, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) is animportant pest of corn. Annual crop rotation between corn and soybean disruptsthe corn-dependent WCR life cycle and is widely adopted to manage this pest.This strategy selected for rotation-resistant (RR) WCR with reduced ovipositionalfidelity to corn. Previous studies revealed that RR-WCR adults exhibitgreater tolerance of soybean diets, different gut physiology, and host?microbeinteractions compared to rotation-susceptible wild types (WT). To identify thegenetic mechanisms underlying these phenotypic changes, a de novo assembly ofthe WCR adult gut transcriptome was constructed and used for RNA-sequencinganalyses of RNA libraries from different WCR phenotypes fed with corn or soybeandiets. Global gene expression profiles of WT- and RR-WCR were similarwhen feeding on corn diets, but different when feeding on soybean. Using network-based methods, we identified gene modules transcriptionally correlatedwith the RR phenotype. Gene ontology enrichment analyses indicated that thefunctions of these modules were related to metabolic processes, immuneresponses, biological adhesion, and other functions/processes that appear to correlateto documented traits in RR populations. These results suggest that guttranscriptomic divergence correlated with brief soybean feeding and other physiologicaltraits may exist between RR- and WT-WCR adults.