Project name: Bemisia tabaci

Description: The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, a notorious agricultural pest, has complex relationships with diverse microbes. It recognizes and degrades pathogens, as other insects do, and also relies on endosymbionts for its survival. Both types of interaction have received great attention, because of their potential importance in developing novel whitefly control technologies. The recent developments in RNA-seq technology allows us to perform a comprehensive investigation of a whitefly’s defense responses after it has ingested the pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Compared to uninfected whiteflies, 6 and 24 hour post-infected (hpi) whiteflies showed 1,348 and 1,888 differentially expressed genes, respectively. Functional analysis highlighted the involvement of mitogen associated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway in host-defense regulation. Three knottin-like antimicrobial peptide genes and several components of the humoral and cellular immune response were also activated, indicating that key immune elements recognized in other insect species are also important for the host response of B. tabaci. Our data also suggest that intestinal stem cell mediated epithelium renewal might be an important component of the whitefly’s defense against oral bacterial infection. In addition, we also show stress responses to be an essential component of the defense system. We identify for the first time the key immune-response elements utilized by B. tabaci against bacterial infection. This provides a framework for future research into the complex interactions between whiteflies and microbes.Overall design: The control and 24 h treatment groups were fed, respectively, with sucrose and bacterial solution. After 18 h, the 6 h treatment group was fed with bacteria. At 24 hours post-infection (hpi), approximately 1,000 whiteflies were collected from the control, 6 and 24 hpi treatments, respectively. Total RNA was purified with SV total RNA isolation kit (Promega). The libraries were sequenced by using Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform at the Beijing Genomics Institute (Shenzhen, China). Each channel generates 6 million reads.

Data type: Transcriptome or Gene expression

Sample scope: Multiisolate

Relevance: Environmental

Last updated: 2013-11-29