title: Comparative analysis of the Monochamus alternatus immune system.
abstract: The pine sawyer beetle, Monochamus alternatus, is regarded as a notorious forest pest in Asia, vectoring an invasive pathogenic nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, which is known to cause pine wilt disease. However, little sequence information is available for this vector beetle. This hampered the research on its immune system. Based on the transcriptome of M. alternatus, we have identified and characterized 194 immunity-related genes in M. alternatus, and compared them with homologues molecules from other species known to exhibit immune responses against invading microbes. The lower number of putative immunity-related genes in M. alternatus were attributed to fewer C-type lectin, serine protease (SP) and anti-microbial peptide (AMP) genes. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that M. alternatus had a unique recognition gene, galectin3, orthologues of which were not identified in Tribolium castaneum, Drosophila melanogastor, Anopheles gambiae and Apis mellifera. This suggested a lineage-specific gene evolution for coleopteran insects. Our study provides the comprehensive sequence resources of the immunity-related genes of M. alternatus, presenting valuable information for better understanding of the molecular mechanism of innate immunity processes in M. alternatus against B. xylophilus.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jiao
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hai-Ying
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Faheem
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ahmad
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Song-Nian
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Li-Lin
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zou
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jiang-Hua
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9465-3672
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D001517:Coleoptera / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology*; D007113:Immunity, Innate / Q000235:genetics; D007303:Insect Vectors; D010802:Phylogeny; D059467:Transcriptome
keywords: Bursaphelenchus xylophilus; Monochamus alternatus; expression profiling; insect immunity; serine protease; transcriptome