The genome and sex-dependent responses to temperature in the common yellow butterfly, Eurema hecabe

BMC Biology

Research Article

Simon K. F. Chan¹  Yingying Wei²  Thomas Swale³  Yichun Xie⁴  Wenyan Nong⁴  Jerome H. L. Hui⁴  Wai Lok So⁴  Ho Yin Yip⁴  Ivy H. T. Lee⁴  Chris K. H. Cheung⁴  Hon-ming Lam⁵  Ting Fung Chan⁶  Nathan Lo⁷  Alexander Hayward⁸  Toby Baril⁸ 

[1] Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, Hong Kong, China;Department of Statistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;Dovetail Genomics, Scotts Valley, USA;School of Life Sciences, Simon F.S. Li Marine Science Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;School of Life Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;School of Life Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Agrobiotechnology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China;School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia;University of Exeter, Exeter, UK;

关键词: Butterfly;    Sex-biased;    Temperature;    Transcriptome;    Genome;    Sesquiterpenoid;    MicroRNA cluster;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12915-023-01703-1

 received in 2022-12-16, accepted in 2023-09-13,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundLepidoptera (butterflies and moths) is one of the most geographically widespread insect orders in the world, and its species play important and diverse ecological and applied roles. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges to biodiversity this century, and lepidopterans are vulnerable to climate change. Temperature-dependent gene expression differences are of relevance under the ongoing climate crisis. However, little is known about how climate affects gene expression in lepidopterans and the ecological consequences of this, particularly with respect to genes with biased expression in one of the sexes. The common yellow butterfly, Eurema hecabe (Family Pieridae), is one of the most geographically widespread lepidopterans that can be found in Asia, Africa, and Australia. Nevertheless, what temperature-dependent effects there may be and whether the effects differ between the sexes remain largely unexplored.ResultsHere, we generated high-quality genomic resources for E. hecabe along with transcriptomes from eight developmental stages. Male and female butterflies were subjected to varying temperatures to assess sex-specific gene expression responses through mRNA and microRNA transcriptomics. We find that there are more temperature-dependent sex-biased genes in females than males, including genes that are involved in a range of biologically important functions, highlighting potential ecological impacts of increased temperatures. Further, by considering available butterfly data on sex-biased gene expression in a comparative genomic framework, we find that the pattern of sex-biased gene expression identified in E. hecabe is highly species-specific, rather than conserved across butterfly species, suggesting that sex-biased gene expression responses to climate change are complex in butterflies.ConclusionsOur study lays the foundation for further understanding of differential responses to environmental stress in a widespread lepidopteran model and demonstrates the potential complexity of sex-specific responses of lepidopterans to climate change.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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