Pheromone gland transcriptome of the pink bollworm moth, Pectinophora gossypiella: Comparison between a laboratory and field population

PLoS One. 2019 Jul 22;14(7):e0220187. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220187. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

The pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella, is a world-wide pest of cotton and in some parts of the cotton growing region is controlled by the mating disruption technique using synthetic sex pheromone. The sex pheromone consists of two compounds, (Z,Z)- and (Z,E)-7,11-hexadecadienyl acetates, in about a 50:50 ratio. However, recently, a population with sex pheromone compound ratios of about 62:38 were found in cotton fields that use mating disruption in Israel. To investigate how the change developed, we compared the pheromone gland transcriptomes between a reference laboratory population and a population obtained from an Israeli cotton field utilizing mating disruption. We analyzed four biological replicates from each population and found transcripts encoding 17 desaturases, 8 reductases, and 17 candidate acetyltransferases in both populations, which could be involved in sex pheromone biosynthesis. The expression abundance of some genes between the two populations was different. Some desaturases and candidate acetyltransferases were found to have mutated in one of the populations. The differentially expressed genes play potential roles in sex pheromone biosynthesis and could be involved in causing altered female sex pheromone ratios in the field population.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Exocrine Glands / metabolism*
  • Female
  • Genetic Speciation
  • Lepidoptera / genetics*
  • Male
  • Sex Attractants / metabolism*
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • Sex Attractants

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the United States-Israel Binational Agricultural Research Development fund (BARD) research grant award IS-4722-14 to AH, VS, and RJ. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.