Putative carboxylesterase gene identification and their expression patterns in Hyphantria cunea (Drury)

Jia Ye; Dingze Mang; Ke Kang; Cheng Chen; Xiaoqing Zhang; Yanping Tang; Endang R Purba; Liwen Song; Qing-He Zhang; Longwa Zhang

doi:10.7717/peerj.10919

Putative carboxylesterase gene identification and their expression patterns in Hyphantria cunea (Drury)

PeerJ. 2021 Mar 2:9:e10919. doi: 10.7717/peerj.10919. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jia Ye^#¹, Dingze Mang^#², Ke Kang^{1

3}, Cheng Chen¹, Xiaoqing Zhang¹, Yanping Tang¹, Endang R Purba⁴, Liwen Song⁵, Qing-He Zhang⁶, Longwa Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Anhui Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Control, Engineering Research Center of Fungal Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, School of Forestry & Landscape Architecture, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, China.
² Graduate School of Bio-Applications and Systems Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tyoko, Japan.
³ Anhui Forestry Bureau, Hefei, China.
⁴ Structural Cellular Biology Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan.
⁵ Jilin Provincial Academy of Forestry Sciences, Changchun, China.
⁶ Sterling International, Inc., Spokane, WA, USA.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The olfactory system of insects is important for behavioral activities as it recognizes internal and external volatile stimuli in the environment. Insect odorant degrading enzymes (ODEs), including antennal-specific carboxylesterases (CXEs), are known to degrade redundant odorant molecules or to hydrolyze important olfactory sex pheromone components and plant volatiles. Compared to many well-studied Type-I sex pheromone-producing lepidopteran species, the molecular mechanisms of the olfactory system of Type-II sex pheromone-producing Hyphantria cunea (Drury) remain poorly understood. In the current study, we first identified a total of ten CXE genes based on our previous H. unea antennal transcriptomic data. We constructed a phylogenetic tree to evaluate the relationship of HcunCXEs with other insects' CXEs, and used quantitative PCR to investigate the gene expression of H. cunea CXEs (HcunCXEs). Our results indicate that HcunCXEs are highly expressed in antennae, legs and wings, suggesting a potential function in degrading sex pheromone components, host plant volatiles, and other xenobiotics. This study not only provides a theoretical basis for subsequent olfactory mechanism studies on H. cunea, but also offers some new insights into functions and evolutionary characteristics of CXEs in lepidopteran insects. From a practical point of view, these HcunCXEs might represent meaningful targets for developing behavioral interference control strategies against H. cunea.

Keywords: Carboxylesterases (CXEs); Expression pattern; Hyphantria cunea (Drury); Olfactory system.

Grants and funding

This project was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program (2018YFC1200400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31870640), the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui province, China (1508085SMC216), and the National Research Innovation Program for undergraduates Graduates (201710364019). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.