Abstract
We describe the odorant binding proteins (OBPs) of the red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, obtained from analyses of an EST library and separate 454 sequencing runs of two normalized cDNA libraries. We identified a total of 18 putative functional OBPs in this ant. A third of the fire ant OBPs are orthologs to honey bee OBPs. Another third of the OBPs belong to a lineage-specific expansion, which is a common feature of insect OBP evolution. Like other OBPs, the different fire ant OBPs share little sequence similarity (∼20%), rendering evolutionary analyses difficult. We discuss the resulting problems with sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis, and tests of selection. As previously suggested, our results underscore the importance for careful exploration of the sensitivity to the effects of alignment methods for data comprising widely divergent sequences.
Highlights
Chemosensory systems play a central role in the way insects perceive their surroundings and are critical to finding mates, food, and oviposition sites
Some Odorant binding proteins (OBPs) appear to be exclusively involved in odor detection, others are expressed in various tissues and during different life stages, which suggests that the protein family can serve multiple functions
We identified a total of 19 OBPs in S. invicta, of which 18 appear to be putatively functional
Summary
Chemosensory systems play a central role in the way insects perceive their surroundings and are critical to finding mates, food, and oviposition sites These olfactory and gustatory systems rely on at least two distinct protein families to translate environmental chemical signals into action potential. Odorant binding proteins were first thought to have highly specific binding affinities to certain semiochemicals and to be exclusively expressed in the antennae of insects. Both hypotheses have proven not to be correct. We attempted to identify and enumerate the full repertoire of OBPs in this ant While such an endeavor previously was not feasible, the recent development of genomic resources for this ant affords us with such an opportunity. Our study highlight the necessity to carefully consider whether current analytical methods are adequate to analyze increasingly divergent molecular sequences (e.g., [14]) as well as the importance of investigating the influence of alignment methods on results
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