title: Plant transcriptomes reveal hidden guests.
abstract: With the wide adoption of transcriptome sequencing an ever increasing amount of information is becoming available, together with spurious data originating from contamination. We show that sometimes errors and inaccuracy can turn beneficial, revealing insect and arthropod pests when analysing plant transcriptomes. We have found a large number of soluble olfactory proteins, odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) and chemosensory proteins (CSPs), in plant databases, likely due to contamination by guest insects. In fact, both classes of proteins are only expressed in insects, with few CSPs also present in other arthropods. In addition, we found many sequences of the Niemann-Pick (Npc2) family, proteins dedicated to cholesterol transport in vertebrates and hypothesised to be involved in chemical communication in insects, but absent in plants. In several cases we were able to trace down members of the three classes of proteins to the insect or arthopod species responsible for contamination. Our work suggests that genes found in plants and recognised as contaminants can be turned into useful information to investigate plant-insect relationships or to identify new sequences from insects species not yet investigated.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.
authors.forename: Jiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China. Electronic address: grwang@ippcaas.cn.
authors.forename: Guirong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China. Electronic address: ppelosi.obp@libero.it.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pelosi
mesh_terms: D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000502:physiology*; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*; D020543:Proteome / Q000378:metabolism*; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D019476:Insect Proteins; D010940:Plant Proteins; D020543:Proteome
keywords: Chemosensory proteins; Horizontal gene transfer; Niemann-Pick proteins; Odorant-binding proteins; Plant transcriptomes; Plant–insect relationships