Core transcriptional signatures of phase change in the migratory locust
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Protein & Cell
RESEARCH ARTICLE Core transcriptional signatures of phase change in the migratory locust Pengcheng Yang1, Li Hou2, Xianhui Wang2&, Le Kang1,2& 1
Beijing Institutes of Life Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China & Correspondence: [email protected] (X. Wang), [email protected] (L. Kang) Received March 31, 2019 Accepted June 17, 2019
ABSTRACT Phenotypic plasticity plays fundamental roles in successful adaptation of animals in response to environmental variations. Here, to reveal the transcriptome reprogramming in locust phase change, a typical phenotypic plasticity, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of multiple phase-related transcriptomic datasets of the migratory locust. We defined PhaseCore genes according to their contribution to phase differentiation by the adjustment for confounding principal components analysis algorithm (AC-PCA). Compared with other genes, PhaseCore genes predicted phase status with over 87.5% accuracy and displayed more unique gene attributes including the faster evolution rate, higher CpG content and higher specific expression level. Then, we identified 20 transcription factors (TFs) named PhaseCoreTF genes that are associated with the regulation of PhaseCore genes. Finally, we experimentally verified the regulatory roles of three representative TFs (Hr4, Hr46, and grh) in phase change by RNAi. Our findings revealed that core transcriptional signatures are involved in the global regulation of locust phase changes, suggesting a potential common mechanism underlying phenotypic plasticity in insects. The expression and network data are accessible in an online resource called LocustMine (http://www.locustmine. org:8080/locustmine).
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13238-019-0648-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
© The Author(s) 2019
KEYWORDS phenotypic plasticity, transcriptional regulatory network, RNA interference INTRODUCTION Phenotypic plasticity is prevalent in organisms and enables individuals of the same species to develop alternative phenotypes in response to changing environments with same genotype (West-Eberhard, 2003). Phenotypic plasticity is usually characterized by remarkable changes in various biological traits, including morphological, behavioral traits, and so on (Pigliucci, 2001; DeWitt and Scheiner, 2004). Moreover, these changes often affect entire suites of characters in numerous tissues throughout life (Pigliucci, 2001; DeWitt and Scheiner, 2004). To reveal the transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of such a complex natural phenomenon, a number of studies have identified numerous differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to phenotypic plasticity in some of model species utilizing high-throughput gene expression profiling technologies (Zayed and Robinson, 2012; Dal Santo et al., 2013; Le
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