Abstract
The lightbrown apple moth, Epiphyas postvittana is an increasingly global pest of horticultural crops. Like other moths, E. postvittana relies on olfactory cues to locate mates and oviposition sites. To detect these cues, moths have evolved families of genes encoding elements of the peripheral olfactory reception system, including odor carriers, receptors and degrading enzymes. Here we undertake a transcriptomic approach to identify members of these families expressed in the adult antennae of E. postvittana, describing open reading frames encoding 34 odorant binding proteins, 13 chemosensory proteins, 70 odorant receptors, 19 ionotropic receptors, nine gustatory receptors, two sensory neuron membrane proteins, 27 carboxylesterases, 20 glutathione-S-transferases, 49 cytochrome p450s and 18 takeout proteins. For the odorant receptors, quantitative RT-PCR corroborated RNAseq count data on steady state transcript levels. Of the eight odorant receptors that group phylogenetically with pheromone receptors from other moths, two displayed significant male-biased expression patterns, one displayed significant female-biased expression pattern and five were expressed equally in the antennae of both sexes. In addition, we found two male-biased odorant receptors that did not group with previously described pheromone receptors. This suite of olfaction-related genes provides a substantial resource for the functional characterization of this signal transduction system and the development of odor-mediated control strategies for horticultural pests.
Highlights
In moths, the ability to detect and respond to odors is essential for finding potential mates, food, and hosts on which to lay their eggs
In this study a total of 19 ionotropic receptor (IR), nine gustatory receptor (GR), two sensory neuron membrane protein (SNMP), 34 Odorant Binding Proteins (OBPs), 13 Chemosensory Binding Proteins (CSPs), 27 CXEs, 20 GSTs, 49 cytochrome p450s (CYPs) and 18 Takeout proteins (TOs) were identified from male and female E. postvittana antennal transcriptomes and their sequences submitted to the Transciptome Shotgun Assembly Sequence Database (TSA) under the accession GCVX00000000
DNA and predicted protein sequences for this set of 191 chemosensory genes can be found in supplementary file, S2 dataset; all but six of these sequences (EposCXE36, EposCYP11, EposCYP38, EposCYP48, EposIR4 and EposIR75p) appear to represent the full-length coding sequence of each gene
Summary
The ability to detect and respond to odors is essential for finding potential mates, food, and hosts on which to lay their eggs. Odorants enter this lymph through wax-filled pores in the external surface of the sensillum and are transported through the lymph to receptors on the surface of the dendrites, before being broken down to reset the signaling system [1,2] Proteins involved in these peripheral signaling events have been identified from moths, and include families of proteins involved in binding and transporting odorants, reception and signaling, and system resetting (see [3] for review). Some of the elements of the molecular machinery have already been identified and characterized from the periphery of E. postvittana antennae [37,38,39,40] These include PBPs, GOBPS, ABPXs and CSP carrier proteins, some ORs, and ODEs from the CXE, GST and CYP families. Within the ORs we identify two groups of male-biased receptors, with one found outside the pheromone receptor clade
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