Pyrosequencing of the adult tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris, And characterization of messages important in metabolism and development

Abstract

The adoption of Bt transgenic cotton has practically eliminated lepidopteran pests from this crop and has produced a secondary pest problem, with pierce-sucking insects such as the tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois) (Hemiptera: Miridae). The future of cotton genetic pest management is threatened by these insects and their development of resistance to chemical insecticides. Lygus lineolaris is also a pest of more than 100 other crops. The development of transcriptome data for this insect should be transformative in essentially all aspects of research on plant bug biology and the development of control strategies. The first 454 tarnished plant bug whole body (WB) and gut (G) transcriptomes were constructed (half plate for each). A total of 116 163 527 bases were obtained, representing 262 555 WB and 229 919 G reads (SRA048217) of which 232 058 (SRS280903) and 168 069 (SRS280894) reads, respectively, were available for assembly. The average read length was 233.1 and 208.5 bp for WB and G, respectively. The whole body and gut reads were assembled together (WB-G) to produce the most complete transcriptome possible from our sequencing effort and resulted in 6 970 contigs with an average length of 393 bp. The gut transcriptome alone was assembled into 3 549 contigs with an average length of 349 bp. The smallest contig was 55 bp and the largest was 3 466 bp, and there were 62 484 sequences that could not be assembled (singletons) among both transcriptomes. Overall transcriptome analysis was organized according to the Gene Ontology consortium, enzyme commission, and InerPro using the Blast2GO® program. We further characterized metabolic systems and messages associated with development. © 2013 The Netherlands Entomological Society.