Abstract
Diapause is a state of developmental arrest that is most often observed in arthropods, especially insects. The domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori, is a typical insect that enters diapause at an early embryonic stage. Previous studies have revealed that the diapause hormone (DH) signaling molecules, especially the core members DH and DH receptor 1 (DHR1), are crucial for the determination of embryonic diapause in diapause silkworm strains. However, whether they function in non-diapause silkworm strains remains largely unknown. Here, we generated two transgenic lines overexpressing DH or DHR1 genes in a non-diapause silkworm strain, Nistari. Our results showed that developmental expression patterns of DH and DHR1 are quite similar in transgenic silkworms: both genes are highly expressed in the mid to late stages of pupae and are most highly expressed in day-6 pupae but are expressed at very low levels in other developmental stages. Moreover, the overexpression of DH or DHR1 can affect the expression of diapause-related genes but is not sufficient to induce embryonic diapause in their offspring. This study provides new insights into the function of DH and DHR1 in a non-diapause silkworm strain.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. Aichun Zhao of Southwest University, China, for valuable comments on this manuscript. This work was supported by Chongqing Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology (cstc2017jcyjBX0041) and Academician Funds of Chongqing (cstc2015jcyjys80001).
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11248_2017_45_MOESM2_ESM.tif
Supplementary Fig. 2 Detection of transgenic silkworm lines using genomic PCR. Red arrowheads indicate the target fragments amplified using genomic PCR primers. The amplicons were confirmed by DNA sequencing. (TIFF 149 kb)
11248_2017_45_MOESM3_ESM.tif
Supplementary Fig. 3 Confirmation of DH and DHR1 overexpression in transgenic silkworms. Relative mRNA expression levels of DH (A) and DHR1 (B) in transgenic silkworm moths were detected by qRT-PCR. Moths of WT, UASDH, and UASDHR1 were used as the control. Error bars represent mean ± SD of three independent replicates. (TIFF 111 kb)
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Gong, C., Zeng, W., Zhang, T. et al. Effects of transgenic overexpression of diapause hormone and diapause hormone receptor genes on non-diapause silkworm. Transgenic Res 26, 807–815 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-017-0045-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-017-0045-y