Transcriptome and expression analysis of Sogatella furcifera (Horváth) (Hemiptera: Delphacidae) in response to cycloxaprid

Abstract Background The white backed planthopper, Sogatella furcifera (Horváth), causes substantial damage to many crops by direct feeding or transmitting plant viruses, especially southern rice black-streaked dwarf virus (SRBSDV) that has become a great threat to rice production in East Asia. Cycloxaprid, a novel cis-nitromethylene neonicotinoid insecticide, has good industrialization prospects because of its high efficiency against rice planthoppers, including imidacloprid-resistant populations. This chemical would be used extensively in future. However, very little is known about the influence on S. furcifera after cycloxaprid application at the molecular level. We sequenced S. furcifera transcriptome of female adult of S. furcifera using the Illumina sequencing. Results By de novo transcriptome assembling and massive parallel pyrosequencing, we constructed two transcriptomes of S. furcifera and profiled the alternation of gene expression in response to cycloxaprid treatment in transcriptional level. Over 157,906,456 nucleotides and 131,601 different unigenes were generated using Illumina technology from both cycloxaprid-treatment and no-treatment S. furcifera. And a total of 38,534 unigenes matched known proteins in at least one database, accounting for 29.28% in total unigenes. The number of Coding DNA Sequence (CDS) were 28,546 and that of the amino acid sequence of coding region were 22,299. A total 15,868 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were identified. The trinucleotide repeats accounted for 45.1% (7,157) in total SSRs and the (AAG/CTT)n was the most frequent motif. There were 359 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that might be induced by cycloxaprid. There were 131 genes up-regulated and 228 down-regulated. 22 unigenes may take participate in the resistance to cycloxaprid, such as cytochrome P450, Glutathione-s transferase (GST), Acid phosphatase (ACP), cadherin, etc. Conclusions Our study will provide a splendid database for future investigations of the resistance mechanism induced by cycloxaprid and will provide new strategies for pest management and crop protection.