Abstract
The extent of the conservation of synteny and gene order in aphids has been previously investigated only by comparing a small subset of linkage groups between the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum and a few other aphid species. Here we compared the localization of eight A. pisum scaffolds (covering more than 5 Mb and 83 genes) in respect to the Drosophila melanogaster Muller elements identifying orthologous loci spanning all the four A. pisum chromosomes. Comparison of the genetic maps revealed a conserved synteny across different loci suggesting that the study of the fruit fly Muller elements could favour the identification of chromosomal markers useful for the study of chromosomal rearrangements in aphids. A. pisum is the first aphid species to have its genome sequenced and the finding that there are several chromosomal regions in synteny between Diptera and Hemiptera indicates that the genomic tools developed in A. pisum will be broadly useful not only for the study of other aphids but also for other insect species.
Highlights
A large number of insect genomes have been wholly sequenced in the last decades in order to better understand their biology and, in particular for pest crop insects, to identify genes that could represent a potential target for their control in the field [1,2,3,4,5,6].Insects are essential to maintaining agricultural ecosystems, but some of them are pests that damage >30% of agricultural, forestry, and livestock production and cause billions in economic losses annually
In order to compare the localization of genes between the A. pisum genome and the D. melanogaster Muller elements, we identified a set of 83 A. pisum genes with orthologues in the fruit fly genome and verified their localization (Figures 1–4)
In the scaffold 003383906 we identified 13 A. pisum genes with orthologues in fruit flies that mapped on Muller elements A, B, C, and D, but 8 of 13 mapped on the Muller element A (Figure 1)
Summary
A large number of insect genomes have been wholly sequenced in the last decades in order to better understand their biology and, in particular for pest crop insects, to identify genes that could represent a potential target for their control in the field [1,2,3,4,5,6].Insects are essential to maintaining agricultural ecosystems, but some of them are pests that damage >30% of agricultural, forestry, and livestock production and cause billions in economic losses annually. A large number of insect genomes have been wholly sequenced in the last decades in order to better understand their biology and, in particular for pest crop insects, to identify genes that could represent a potential target for their control in the field [1,2,3,4,5,6]. A better understanding of many individual genes and gene families has been obtained as well [1,2,3,4,5,6] Most of these projects (except Diptera) completely lacked any information about the chromosomal localization of the identified genes and, as a consequence, the involvement of chromosomal rearrangements in insect biology has been almost neglected
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