title: Divergent evolution of arrested development in the dauer stage of Caenorhabditis elegans and the infective stage of Heterodera glycines.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The soybean cyst nematode Heterodera glycines is the most important parasite in soybean production worldwide. A comprehensive analysis of large-scale gene expression changes throughout the development of plant-parasitic nematodes has been lacking to date.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We report an extensive genomic analysis of H. glycines, beginning with the generation of 20,100 expressed sequence tags (ESTs). In-depth analysis of these ESTs plus approximately 1,900 previously published sequences predicted 6,860 unique H. glycines genes and allowed a classification by function using InterProScan. Expression profiling of all 6,860 genes throughout the H. glycines life cycle was undertaken using the Affymetrix Soybean Genome Array GeneChip. Our data sets and results represent a comprehensive resource for molecular studies of H. glycines. Demonstrating the power of this resource, we were able to address whether arrested development in the Caenorhabditis elegans dauer larva and the H. glycines infective second-stage juvenile (J2) exhibits shared gene expression profiles. We determined that the gene expression profiles associated with the C. elegans dauer pathway are not uniformly conserved in H. glycines and that the expression profiles of genes for metabolic enzymes of C. elegans dauer larvae and H. glycines infective J2 are dissimilar.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results indicate that hallmark gene expression patterns and metabolism features are not shared in the developmentally arrested life stages of C. elegans and H. glycines, suggesting that developmental arrest in these two nematode species has undergone more divergent evolution than previously thought and pointing to the need for detailed genomic analyses of individual parasite species.
authors.affiliation: Interdepartmental Genetics Program, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011, USA. elling@iastate.edu
authors.forename: Axel A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Elling
authors.forename: Makedonka
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mitreva
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Recknor
authors.forename: Xiaowu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gai
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.forename: Thomas R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Maier
authors.forename: Jeffrey P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: McDermott
authors.forename: Tarek
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hewezi
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: McK Bird
authors.forename: Eric L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Davis
authors.forename: Richard S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Hussey
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nettleton
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: McCarter
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Baum
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000378:metabolism*; D019295:Computational Biology; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D015723:Gene Library; D007814:Larva / Q000378:metabolism; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013025:Glycine max / Q000469:parasitology*; D013045:Species Specificity; D014431:Tylenchoidea / Q000378:metabolism*