Transcriptome Analysis of Male Drosophila melanogaster Exposed to Ethylparaben Using Digital Gene Expression Profiling

Abstract

Ethylparaben (EP) has been shown to have estrogenic effects and can affect the normal development, longevity, and reproductive system of some animals. In this study, we investigated the effects of EP in male Drosophila melanogaster using transcriptome analysis or digital gene expression profiling. We then screened differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two groups (EP-treated and control group) of Drosophila, and performed clustering analysis, gene ontology (GO) function annotation, kyoto encyclopedia of gene and genomes metabolic pathway analysis. We found that EP enriched GO in three processes: cellular component, molecular function, and biological process. Consequently, we detected 13,959 genes and among them, 18 genes were identified to be significantly expressed between the EP-treated and control samples. Of these, seven genes were down-regulated, and eleven genes were up-regulated in EP-treated samples. Furthermore, four DEGs including two down-regulated genes (CG9465, CG9468) and two up-regulated genes (TotA, Sqz) were verified by real-time quantitative PCR. This study revealed the impact of EP on gene expression in fruit fly and provided new insight into the mechanisms of this response, which is helpful for understanding EP toxicity to humans.

De Novo Assembly and Characterization of the Transcriptome of an Omnivorous Camel Cricket (Tachycines meditationis)

“…Based on annotation, we identified 46 putative OBP genes, 22 CSPs, 38 ORs, 13 IRs, 6 SNMPs, and 5 GRs in T. meditationis ( Figure 3 a). There were more genes in OBP and OR than in GR and SNMP, consistent with the sizes of these gene families in most insects [ 7 , 26 ]. The ENC and GC12/GC3 values of the six gene families in T. meditationis were further compared with those of the whole gene sequence, and the results showed that the codon bias of the chemosensory genes did not differ from the codon bias of the whole genome ( Figure 3 b).…”

“…Transcriptomic analysis can reveal an organism’s expressed gene sequences, annotations, and expression levels [ 5 , 6 ]. For research that is less concerned with other genomic factors (e.g., repetitive elements), the transcriptome provides sufficient data for probing functional components of a given organism’s genome [ 7 ].…”

Digital Gene Expression Profiling Analysis of Aged Mice under Moxibustion Treatment

“…DGE technology has been used more commonly in examining the differences of transcriptional responses in different tissues and organs. This is because DGE can identify millions of differentially expressed genes before prior annotation and the organisms without much genetic information are also allowed to be analyzed by DGE [ 14 ].…”