TY - JOUR
T1 - De novo transcriptome analysis of the common New Zealand stick insect clitarchus hookeri (Phasmatodea) Reveals genes involved in olfaction, digestion and sexual reproduction
AU - Wu, Chen
AU - Crowhurst, Ross N.
AU - Dennis, Alice B.
AU - Twort, Victoria G.
AU - Liu, Shanlin
AU - Newcomb, Richard D.
AU - Ross, Howard A.
AU - Buckley, Thomas R.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) for high-performance computing facilities; P. Maxwell, X. Cheng, K. Rutherford, J. Blasco, M. Feller, H. Liu, M. Zhang and Y. Wang for analytic help; S. Myers, K. King and M. McDonald for field assistance; L. Dunning for his contribution in the construction to the C. hookeri head and prothorax transcriptome; R. Howitt, J. Allwood, A. Ramon-Laca, and D. Park for laboratory support. We thank K. Meusemann, A. Donath, X. Zhou, K. Kjer, B. Misof, L. Podsiadlowski, B. Wipfler and the 1kite Polyneopetra subgroup ( http://www.1kite.org/subprojects.html ) for providing the leg RNA-Seq data and especially A. Donath for submission to and data release on NCBI. We also thank the Allan Wilson Centre for funding, collaboration and facility support. We thank J. Joe Hull and three anonymous reviewers for giving us valuable suggestions to strengthen this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Wu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/6
Y1 - 2016/6
N2 - Phasmatodea, more commonly known as stick insects, have been poorly studied at the molecular level for several key traits, such as components of the sensory system and regulators of reproduction and development, impeding a deeper understanding of their functional biology. Here, we employ de novo transcriptome analysis to identify genes with primary functions related to female odour reception, digestion, and male sexual traits in the New Zealand common stick insect Clitarchus hookeri (White). The female olfactory gene repertoire revealed ten odorant binding proteins with three recently duplicated, 12 chemosensory proteins, 16 odorant receptors, and 17 ionotropic receptors. The majority of these olfactory genes were over-expressed in female antennae and have the inferred function of odorant reception. Others that were predominantly expressed in male terminalia (n = 3) and female midgut (n = 1) suggest they have a role in sexual reproduction and digestion, respectively. Over-represented transcripts in the midgut were enriched with digestive enzyme gene families. Clitarchus hookeri is likely to harbour nine members of an endogenous cellulase family (glycoside hydrolase family 9), two of which appear to be specific to the C. hookeri lineage. All of these cellulase sequences fall into four main phasmid clades and show gene duplication events occurred early in the diversification of Phasmatodea. In addition, C. hookeri genome is likely to express γ-proteobacteria pectinase transcripts that have recently been shown to be the result of horizontal transfer. We also predicted 711 male terminalia- enriched transcripts that are candidate accessory gland proteins, 28 of which were annotated to have molecular functions of peptidase activity and peptidase inhibitor activity, two groups being widely reported to regulate female reproduction through proteolytic cascades. Our study has yielded new insights into the genetic basis of odour detection, nutrient.
AB - Phasmatodea, more commonly known as stick insects, have been poorly studied at the molecular level for several key traits, such as components of the sensory system and regulators of reproduction and development, impeding a deeper understanding of their functional biology. Here, we employ de novo transcriptome analysis to identify genes with primary functions related to female odour reception, digestion, and male sexual traits in the New Zealand common stick insect Clitarchus hookeri (White). The female olfactory gene repertoire revealed ten odorant binding proteins with three recently duplicated, 12 chemosensory proteins, 16 odorant receptors, and 17 ionotropic receptors. The majority of these olfactory genes were over-expressed in female antennae and have the inferred function of odorant reception. Others that were predominantly expressed in male terminalia (n = 3) and female midgut (n = 1) suggest they have a role in sexual reproduction and digestion, respectively. Over-represented transcripts in the midgut were enriched with digestive enzyme gene families. Clitarchus hookeri is likely to harbour nine members of an endogenous cellulase family (glycoside hydrolase family 9), two of which appear to be specific to the C. hookeri lineage. All of these cellulase sequences fall into four main phasmid clades and show gene duplication events occurred early in the diversification of Phasmatodea. In addition, C. hookeri genome is likely to express γ-proteobacteria pectinase transcripts that have recently been shown to be the result of horizontal transfer. We also predicted 711 male terminalia- enriched transcripts that are candidate accessory gland proteins, 28 of which were annotated to have molecular functions of peptidase activity and peptidase inhibitor activity, two groups being widely reported to regulate female reproduction through proteolytic cascades. Our study has yielded new insights into the genetic basis of odour detection, nutrient.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976583532&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0157783
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0157783
M3 - Article
C2 - 27336743
AN - SCOPUS:84976583532
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6
M1 - e0157783
ER -