Abstract
Harmonia axyridis is an important natural predator used in the biological control of insect pests. Vitellogenin (Vg) supplementation to artificial diet can improve fecundity of H. axyridis, however, the effects of Vg on physiology of H. axyridis at the molecular level is unclear. This study investigated the effects of Vg on the physiology (digestive enzyme activities) and transcriptome patterns by feeding H. axyridis adults with treatment (artificial diet with Vg supplement) and control (artificial diet supplemented with bovine serum albumin (BSA). The transcriptome sequencing yielded 43.94 Gb of clean data, and 3,946 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) – including 93 upregulated and 3,853 downregulated genes between the treatment and control. Six DEGs related to development and digestive enzyme were chosen for quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) to validate the accuracy of the RNA-seq results and confirmed that the transcriptome analysis yielded reliable results. The Vg supplement has increased activities of digestive enzymes and related genes expression in H. axyridis. The transcript level of digestive enzyme genes (apolipoprotein D and phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase) were much higher in adults fed on diet supplemented with Vg compared with that of the control.
Highlights
Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) is an omnivorous predator that was widely introduced in North America and Europe as early as 1916 (Gordon, 1985; Adriaens et al, 2003)
Niijima et al (1977) developed an artificial diet for H. axyridis, they found that an artificial diet does not assist in egg production; it does sustain adult H. axyridis
We used different supplement samples mixed with a successful artificial diet (Zhang S. et al, 2017) to compare the differences between the Vg and BSA proteins effects through a transcriptome analysis, the gene expression profiles between insects fed the Vg and BSA
Summary
Harmonia axyridis (Pallas) is an omnivorous predator that was widely introduced in North America and Europe as early as 1916 (Gordon, 1985; Adriaens et al, 2003). This polyphagous predator feeds on aphids, coccids (Mcclure, 1987; Hodek and Honek, 2009), lepidopteran eggs (Ferran et al, 1984) and other insects (Koch et al, 2003). To reduce the use of and adverse effects of chemical pesticides, insect pest control by natural enemy insects has received widespread attention. A natural prey diet is unable to sustain a population of H. axyridis
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