Genes involved in thoracic exoskeleton formation during the pupal-to-adult molt in a social insect model, Apis mellifera

BMC Genomics

Research Article

Ana Carolina Quirino Simões¹  Angel Roberto Barchuk²  Luísa Lange Canhos³  Márcia Maria Gentile Bitondi³  Michelle Prioli Miranda Soares⁴  Flávia Cristina de Paula Freitas⁴  Alexandre dos Santos Cristino⁵ 

[1] Centro de Engenharia, Modelagem e Ciências Sociais Aplicadas – CECS, Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo André, SP, Brazil;Departamento de Biologia Celular, Tecidual e do Desenvolvimento, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade Federal de Alfenas, Alfenas, MG, Brazil;Departamento de Biologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brasil;Departamento de Genética, Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brasil;The Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia;

关键词: Cuticular protein genes;    Metamorphosis;    Molt;    Thoracic musculature;    Microarrays;    Honeybee;    Apis mellifera;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-14-576

 received in 2013-03-12, accepted in 2013-08-23,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe insect exoskeleton provides shape, waterproofing, and locomotion via attached somatic muscles. The exoskeleton is renewed during molting, a process regulated by ecdysteroid hormones. The holometabolous pupa transforms into an adult during the imaginal molt, when the epidermis synthe3sizes the definitive exoskeleton that then differentiates progressively. An important issue in insect development concerns how the exoskeletal regions are constructed to provide their morphological, physiological and mechanical functions. We used whole-genome oligonucleotide microarrays to screen for genes involved in exoskeletal formation in the honeybee thoracic dorsum. Our analysis included three sampling times during the pupal-to-adult molt, i.e., before, during and after the ecdysteroid-induced apolysis that triggers synthesis of the adult exoskeleton.ResultsGene ontology annotation based on orthologous relationships with Drosophila melanogaster genes placed the honeybee differentially expressed genes (DEGs) into distinct categories of Biological Process and Molecular Function, depending on developmental time, revealing the functional elements required for adult exoskeleton formation. Of the 1,253 unique DEGs, 547 were upregulated in the thoracic dorsum after apolysis, suggesting induction by the ecdysteroid pulse. The upregulated gene set included 20 of the 47 cuticular protein (CP) genes that were previously identified in the honeybee genome, and three novel putative CP genes that do not belong to a known CP family. In situ hybridization showed that two of the novel genes were abundantly expressed in the epidermis during adult exoskeleton formation, strongly implicating them as genuine CP genes. Conserved sequence motifs identified the CP genes as members of the CPR, Tweedle, Apidermin, CPF, CPLCP1 and Analogous-to-Peritrophins families. Furthermore, 28 of the 36 muscle-related DEGs were upregulated during the de novo formation of striated fibers attached to the exoskeleton. A search for cis-regulatory motifs in the 5′-untranslated region of the DEGs revealed potential binding sites for known transcription factors. Construction of a regulatory network showed that various upregulated CP- and muscle-related genes (15 and 21 genes, respectively) share common elements, suggesting co-regulation during thoracic exoskeleton formation.ConclusionsThese findings help reveal molecular aspects of rigid thoracic exoskeleton formation during the ecdysteroid-coordinated pupal-to-adult molt in the honeybee.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Soares et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.