Glutathione S-transferase (GST) genes in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, and comparative analysis with five additional insects

Abstract

Glutathione S-transferases are important detoxification enzymes involved in insecticide resistance. Sequencing the Tribolium castaneum genome provides an opportunity to investigate the structure, function, and evolution of GSTs on a genome-wide scale. Thirty-six putative cytosolic GSTs and 5 microsomal GSTs have been identified in T. castaneum. Furthermore, 40, 35, 13, 23, and 32 GSTs have been discovered the other insects, Drosophila, Anopheles, Apis, Bombyx, and Acyrthosiphon, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses reveal that insect-specific GSTs, Epsilon and Delta, are the largest species-specific expanded GSTs. In T. castaneum, most GSTs are tandemly arranged in three chromosomes. Particularly, Epsilon GSTs have an inverted long-fragment duplication in the genome. Other four widely distributed classes are highly conserved in all species. Given that GSTs specially expanded in Tribolium castaneum, these genes might help to resist poisonous chemical environments and produce resistance to kinds of different insecticides.

Forensic genomics as a novel tool for identifying the causes of mass mortality events

“…Our data also implicate a well-known detoxification gene 30 , glutathione-S-transferase, in abalone toxin tolerance. Our results suggest that red abalones have genetic variation for response to YTX effects particularly in alleles at cadherin loci.…”

“…It is known that changes in intracellular calcium homeostasis disrupt mitochondrial membrane potential, inhibiting the electron transport chain 24 . Furthermore, glutathione-S-transferase, known in insects 30 to be involved in detoxification of a wide range of exogenous compounds, contains three high F ST SNPs, and may thus be a potential player in toxin detoxification in abalone.…”

Glutathione-S-transferase profiles in the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis

“…From the blast results, it was evident that there is a general paucity of molecular knowledge in wood boring beetles. Further, multiple sequence alignment with other insect GSTs revealed conserved residues as described previously in other insects (Mittapalli et al, 2007;Wang et al, 2008;Yamamoto et al, 2011;H. Shi et al, 2012) The dominance of the recovered epsilon class GST members perhaps implies the importance of these GSTs during the course of evolution/adaptation of this beetle on its host as observed in other insect groups (Enayati et al, 2005;Ketterman et al, 2011).…”

Transcriptome analysis of the Japanese pine sawyer beetle, Monochamus alternatus (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) by high-throughput Illumina sequencing

“…Recently, several insect genome sequencing projects have been completed. Based on these results, it has been estimated that 37, 41, 28, 8, and 23 cytosolic GSTs are present in Drosophila melanogaster Meigen, T. castaneum, Anopheles gambiae Giles, Apis mellifera Linnaeus, and Bombyx mori Linnaeus, respectively (Ranson et al, 2002;Claudianos et al, 2006;Corona and Robinson, 2006;Yu et al, 2008;Shi et al, 2012). Currently, only one microsomal GST in D. melanogaster, three microsomal GST in A. gambiae and two microsomal GST in A. mellifera have been identified (Claudianos et al, 2006).…”

“…To date, the Delta and Epsilon GSTs are the only two classes of GSTs that are thought to affect pesticide sensitivity. It is unclear, however, how many GST genes are necessary to provide adequate detoxification protection (Shi et al, 2012). Therefore, future studies on the GSTs in M. alternatus are needed to identify their potential functions and mechanisms.…”