First identification of long non-coding RNAs in fungal parasite Nosema ceranae

Abstract

Nosema ceranae is a unicellular fungal parasite of honey bees and causes huge losses for apiculture. Until present, no study on N. ceranae long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) was documented. Here, we sequenced purified spores of N. ceranae using strand-specific library construction and high-throughput RNA sequencing technologies. In total, 83 novel lncRNAs were predicted from N. ceranae spore samples, including lncRNAs, long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs), and sense lncRNAs. Moreover, these lncRNAs share similar characteristics with those identified in mammals and plants, such as shorter length and fewer exon number and transcript isoforms than protein-coding genes. Finally, the expression of 12 lncRNAs was confirmed with RT-PCR, confirming their true existence. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of lncRNAs produced by a microsporidia species, offering novel insights into basic biology such as regulation of gene expression of this widespread taxonomic group.