Identification and tissue expression profiling of candidate UDP-glycosyltransferase genes expressed in Holotrichia parallela motschulsky antennae

Abstract

It is difficult to control Holotrichia parallela Motschulsky with chemical insecticides due to the larvae's soil-living habit, thus the pest has caused great economic losses in agriculture. In addition, uridine diphosphate-glycosyltransferases (UGTs) catalyze the glycosylation process of a variety of small lipophilic molecules with sugars to produce water-soluble glycosides, and play multiple roles in detoxification, endobiotic modulation, and sequestration in an insect. Some UGTs were found specifically expressed in antennae of Drosophila melanogaster and Spodoptera littoralis, and glucurono-conjugated odorants could not elicit any olfactory signals, suggesting that the UGTs may play roles in odorant inactivation by biotransformation. In the current study, we performed a genome-wide analysis of the candidate UGT family in the dark black chafer, H. parallela. Based on a UGT gene signature and the similarity of these genes to UGT homologs from other organisms, 20 putative H. parallela UGT genes were identified. Bioinformatics analysis was used to predict sequence and structural features of H. parallela UGT proteins, and revealed important domains and residues involved in sugar donor binding and catalysis by comparison with human UGT2B7. Phylogenetic analysis of these 20 UGT protein sequences revealed eight major groups, including both order-specific and conserved groups, which are common to more than one order. Of these 20 UGT genes, HparUGT1265-1, HparUGT3119, and HparUGT8312 were highly (>100-fold change) expressed in antennae, suggesting a possible role in olfactory tissue, and most likely in odorant inactivation and olfactory processing. The remaining UGT genes were expressed in all tissues (head, thorax, abdomen, leg, and wing), indicating that these UGTs likely have different biological functions. This study provides the fundamental basis for determining the function of UGTs in a highly specialized olfactory organ, the H. parallela antenna.

Evidence of peripheral olfactory impairment in the domestic silkworms: insight from the comparative transcriptome and population genetics

“…The novel ORs of B. mori (BmORs) are in italic and bold. The other OR sequences of B. mori , P. xylostella (PxORs) and M. sexta (MsORs) were from the previous studies [ 59 , 60 ]

Fig. 2 ML tree of IRs in B. mori , D. melanogaster , and M. sexta .

…”

“… Genes with FPKM ≥1 in at least one of the four antennal samples were considered to be expressed. The genome-annotated genes were retrieved from the previous studies, including OBPs [ 58 ], ORs [ 59 , 60 ], SNMPs [ 42 ], IRs [ 59 ], CSPs [ 61 ], GSTs [ 62 ], UGTs [ 63 ], COEs [ 64 ], P450s [ 65 ], and AOXs [ 66 ]. Novel genes were identified in transcriptome assembly, and its corresponding sequences were included in Additional file 7 : Table S6 …”

UDP-Glycosyltransferase Genes in the Striped Rice Stem Borer, Chilo suppressalis (Walker), and Their Contribution to Chlorantraniliprole Resistance

“…Cap3 software was used to identify the overlaps between different sequences and to remove redundant fragments (). Uridine diphosphate glycosyltransferase conserved domains ‘UDPGT’ of UGT genes were analyzed by using the SMART online software () [31]. Each of the putative UGT sequences was used as a query to search the NCBI non-redundant protein database using BLASTX to validate further the potential UGTs ().…”

The Fall Armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda Utilizes Specific UDP-Glycosyltransferases to Inactivate Maize Defensive Benzoxazinoids

“…Nevertheless, characterization of insect UGTs, especially at the functional level, is still scarce in the literature, and this superfamily of detoxifying enzymes is not as well studied as others such as cytochrome P450 monooxygenases, glutathione-S-transferases (GSTs), and carboxylesterases (Despres et al, 2007). Some insect UGTs, for example, are known to participate in cuticle formation (Kramer and Hopkins, 1987;Hopkins and Kramer, 1992), pigmentation (Daimon et al, 2010), and olfaction and odorant modulation (Wang et al, 1999;Wang et al, 2018). Insect viruses possess genes encoding ecdysteroid glucosyltransferases that are assumed to be derived from insect UGT genes, and are involved with larval molting delay during infection (O'Reilly and Miller, 1989) and behavior modulation (Hoover et al, 2011).…”