Abstract
The complex stripes and patterns of insects play key roles in behavior and ecology. However, the fine-scale regulation mechanisms underlying pigment formation and morphological divergence remain largely unelucidated. Here we demonstrated that imaginal disc growth factor (IDGF) maintains cuticle structure and controls melanization in spot pattern formation of Bombyx mori. Moreover, our knockout experiments showed that IDGF is suggested to impact the expression levels of the ecdysone inducible transcription factor E75A and pleiotropic factors apt-like and Toll8/spz3, to further control the melanin metabolism. Furthermore, the untargeted metabolomics analyses revealed that BmIDGF significantly affected critical metabolites involved in phenylalanine, beta-alanine, purine, and tyrosine metabolism pathways. Our findings highlighted not only the universal function of IDGF to the maintenance of normal cuticle structure but also an underexplored space in the gene function affecting melanin formation. Therefore, this study furthers our understanding of insect pigment metabolism and melanin pattern polymorphisms.
Highlights
Animal spot and stripe patterns, which are typically observed pigmentation patterns, work as aposematic or camouflage coloration to help animals avoid predators
This study provides direct evidence that imaginal disc growth factor (IDGF) maintains cuticle structure and controls melanization in the spot pattern formation
We demonstrate that IDGF impacts the expression levels of the 20E-inducible transcription factor E75A and pleiotropic factors apt-like and Toll8/spz3, to further affect the melanin metabolism
Summary
Animal spot and stripe patterns, which are typically observed pigmentation patterns, work as aposematic or camouflage coloration to help animals avoid predators. Research conducted on different species or spontaneous mutants within species has provided powerful evidence for the genetic and evolutionary regulation of the color patterns [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. In those reports, various genetic factors that contribute to pigmentary phenotypic differences in larval and adult bodies have been identified, including numerous pleiotropic factors, the sex-linked gene tan, the HOX genes abd-A and Abd-B, and Spatzle3 [10,11,12]. The formation mechanisms underlying the formation of stripe patterns of a variety of organisms have been studied, including zebrafish, zebra, rodents, and insects [13,14,15,16], the mechanism underlying the regulation of the metabolites for producing multiple stripe and spot patterns is largely unknown
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