RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 A clonally reproducing generalist aphid pest colonises diverse host plants by rapid transcriptional plasticity of duplicated gene clusters
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 063610
DO 10.1101/063610
A1 Thomas C. Mathers
A1 Yazhou Chen
A1 Gemy Kaithakottil
A1 Fabrice Legeai
A1 Sam T. Mugford
A1 Patrice Baa-Puyoulet
A1 Anthony Bretaudeau
A1 Bernardo Clavijo
A1 Stefano Colella
A1 Olivier Collin
A1 Tamas Dalmay
A1 Thomas Derrien
A1 Honglin Feng
A1 Toni Gabaldón
A1 Anna Jordan
A1 Irene Julca
A1 Graeme J. Kettles
A1 Krissana Kowitwanich
A1 Dominique Lavenier
A1 Paolo Lenzi
A1 Sara Lopez-Gomollon
A1 Damian Loska
A1 Daniel Mapleson
A1 Florian Mauster
A1 Simon Moxon
A1 Daniel R. G. Price
A1 Akiko Sugio
A1 Manuella van Munster
A1 Marilyne Uzest
A1 Darren Waite
A1 Georg Jander
A1 Denis Tagu
A1 Alex C. C. Wilson
A1 Cock van Oosterhout
A1 David Swarbreck
A1 Saskia A. Hogenhout
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/19/063610.abstract
AB Background The prevailing paradigm of host-parasite evolution is that arms races lead to increasing specialisation via genetic adaptation. Insect herbivores are no exception, and the majority have evolved to colonise a small number of closely related host species. Remarkably, the green peach aphid, Myzus persicae, colonises plant species across 40 families and single M. persicae clonal lineages can colonise distantly related plants. This remarkable ability makes M. persicae a highly destructive pest of many important crop species.Results To investigate the exceptional phenotypic plasticity of M. persicae, we sequenced the M. persicae genome and assessed how one clonal lineage responds to host plant species of different families. We show that genetically identical individuals are able to colonise distantly related host species through the differential regulation of genes belonging to aphid-expanded gene families. Multigene clusters collectively up-regulate in single aphids within two days upon host switch. Furthermore, we demonstrate the functional significance of this rapid transcriptional change using RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated knock-down of genes belonging to the cathepsin B gene family. Knock-down of cathepsin B genes reduced aphid fitness, but only on the host that induced up-regulation of these genes.Conclusions Previous research has focused on the role of genetic adaptation of parasites to their hosts. Here we show that the generalist aphid pest M. persicae is able to colonise diverse host plant species in the absence of genetic specialisation. This is achieved through rapid transcriptional plasticity of genes that have duplicated during aphid evolution.