Abstract
BackgroundSweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci MED/Q and MEAM1/B, are two economically important invasive species that cause considerable damages to agriculture crops through direct feeding and indirect vectoring of plant pathogens. Recently, a draft genome of B. tabaci MED/Q has been assembled. In this study, we focus on the genomic comparison between MED/Q and MEAM1/B, with a special interest in MED/Q’s genomic signatures that may contribute to the highly invasive nature of this emerging insect pest.ResultsThe genomes of both species share similarity in syntenic blocks, but have significant divergence in the gene coding sequence. Expansion of cytochrome P450 monooxygenases and UDP glycosyltransferases in MED/Q and MEAM1/B genome is functionally validated for mediating insecticide resistance in MED/Q using in vivo RNAi. The amino acid biosynthesis pathways in MED/Q genome are partitioned among the host and endosymbiont genomes in a manner distinct from other hemipterans. Evidence of horizontal gene transfer to the host genome may explain their obligate relationship. Putative loss-of-function in the immune deficiency-signaling pathway due to the gene loss is a shared ancestral trait among hemipteran insects.ConclusionsThe expansion of detoxification genes families, such as P450s, may contribute to the development of insecticide resistance traits and a broad host range in MED/Q and MEAM1/B, and facilitate species’ invasions into intensively managed cropping systems. Numerical and compositional changes in multiple gene families (gene loss and gene gain) in the MED/Q genome sets a foundation for future hypothesis testing that will advance our understanding of adaptation, viral transmission, symbiosis, and plant-insect-pathogen tritrophic interactions.
Highlights
Sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci MED/Q and MEAM1/B, are two economically important invasive species that cause considerable damages to agriculture crops through direct feeding and indirect vectoring of plant pathogens
The proportion of MED/Q reads that mapped to MED/Q (79.2%; 69.55% for paired alignment ratio, plus 9.65% for singled alignment ratio), was greater compared to the proportion that mapped to MEAM1/B (56%; 26.63%, plus 30.04%) sequencing reads from MED/Q mapping to
This showed that on average 5.26% of nucleotide sequence across the conserved regions of the MED/Q genome to which reads were mapped comprised substitutions when compared to MEAM1/B (Additional file 4: Table S2)
Summary
Sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci MED/Q and MEAM1/B, are two economically important invasive species that cause considerable damages to agriculture crops through direct feeding and indirect vectoring of plant pathogens. The sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, consists of a group of cryptic sibling species [1] that contains some of the world’s most damaging agricultural pests, and are considered among the world’s worst invasive species (Global Invasive Species Database: http://www.issg.org/ database/welcome/) [2]. This impact on global agriculture is likely due to their broad host range (reported to feed on over 900 plant species) and transmit plant diseases (vectoring over 100 plant viruses) [3,4,5,6]. Variation in endosymbiont communities within Bemisia is associated with distinct host haplotypes, and these endosymbiont communities may influence the competency of Bemisia subspecies to vector different plant viruses [23]
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