Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes

The innate immune system in insects consists of a conserved core signaling network and rapidly diversifying effector and recognition components, often containing a high proportion of taxonomically-restricted genes. In the absence of functional annotation, genes encoding immune system proteins can th...

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Main Authors:	Sackton, Timothy B., Werren, John H., Clark, Andrew G.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873987/

id	pubmed-3873987
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38739872014-01-02 Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes Sackton, Timothy B. Werren, John H. Clark, Andrew G. Research Article The innate immune system in insects consists of a conserved core signaling network and rapidly diversifying effector and recognition components, often containing a high proportion of taxonomically-restricted genes. In the absence of functional annotation, genes encoding immune system proteins can thus be difficult to identify, as homology-based approaches generally cannot detect lineage-specific genes. Here, we use RNA-seq to compare the uninfected and infection-induced transcriptome in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis to identify genes regulated by infection. We identify 183 genes significantly up-regulated by infection and 61 genes significantly down-regulated by infection. We also produce a new homology-based immune catalog in N. vitripennis, and show that most infection-induced genes cannot be assigned an immune function from homology alone, suggesting the potential for substantial novel immune components in less well-studied systems. Finally, we show that a high proportion of these novel induced genes are taxonomically restricted, highlighting the rapid evolution of immune gene content. The combination of functional annotation using RNA-seq and homology-based annotation provides a robust method to characterize the innate immune response across a wide variety of insects, and reveals significant novel features of the Nasonia immune response. Public Library of Science 2013-12-27 /pmc/articles/PMC3873987/ /pubmed/24386321 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083984 Text en © 2013 Sackton et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Sackton, Timothy B. Werren, John H. Clark, Andrew G.
spellingShingle	Sackton, Timothy B. Werren, John H. Clark, Andrew G. Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
author_facet	Sackton, Timothy B. Werren, John H. Clark, Andrew G.
author_sort	Sackton, Timothy B.
title	Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
title_short	Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
title_full	Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
title_fullStr	Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
title_full_unstemmed	Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes
title_sort	characterizing the infection-induced transcriptome of nasonia vitripennis reveals a preponderance of taxonomically-restricted immune genes
description	The innate immune system in insects consists of a conserved core signaling network and rapidly diversifying effector and recognition components, often containing a high proportion of taxonomically-restricted genes. In the absence of functional annotation, genes encoding immune system proteins can thus be difficult to identify, as homology-based approaches generally cannot detect lineage-specific genes. Here, we use RNA-seq to compare the uninfected and infection-induced transcriptome in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis to identify genes regulated by infection. We identify 183 genes significantly up-regulated by infection and 61 genes significantly down-regulated by infection. We also produce a new homology-based immune catalog in N. vitripennis, and show that most infection-induced genes cannot be assigned an immune function from homology alone, suggesting the potential for substantial novel immune components in less well-studied systems. Finally, we show that a high proportion of these novel induced genes are taxonomically restricted, highlighting the rapid evolution of immune gene content. The combination of functional annotation using RNA-seq and homology-based annotation provides a robust method to characterize the innate immune response across a wide variety of insects, and reveals significant novel features of the Nasonia immune response.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873987/
_version_	1612041835960598528

Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes

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