農(nóng)業(yè)蟲(chóng)鼠害綜合治理研究國(guó)家重點(diǎn)實(shí)驗(yàn)室康樂(lè)研究組應(yīng)用高通量測(cè)序的方法在飛蝗中發(fā)現(xiàn)了大量的small RNA,。
研究人員通過(guò)與其它昆蟲(chóng)small RNA的比對(duì)發(fā)現(xiàn)了50種保守的miRNA,， 并且發(fā)展了一種新的方法在沒(méi)有基因組序列的前提下挖掘飛蝗特有的miRNA,，發(fā)現(xiàn)了大約185種飛蝗特有的miRNA candidates,。
本研究還闡述了miRNA*的保守性,，以及昆蟲(chóng)miRNA的進(jìn)化機(jī)制,，大量的endo-siRNA以及piRNA也在飛蝗中鑒定出來(lái),。同時(shí)研究并發(fā)現(xiàn)飛蝗群散兩型在small RNA的表達(dá)譜上面存在著巨大的差異,，揭示了small RNA在飛蝗型變中可能起到的巨大作用。相關(guān)研究發(fā)表在《基因組生物學(xué)》（Genome Biology）雜志上,。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推薦原始出處：
Genome Biology,，doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-1-r6，Yuanyuan Wei,，Le Kang
Characterization and comparative profiling of the small RNA transcriptomes in two phases of locust
Yuanyuan Wei , Shuang Chen , Pengcheng Yang , Zongyuan Ma and Le Kang
State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, PR China
Background
All the reports on insect small RNAs come from holometabolous insects whose genome sequence data are available. Therefore, study of hemimetabolous insect small RNAs could provide more insights into evolution and function of small RNAs in insects. The locust is an important, economically harmful hemimetabolous insect. Its phase changes, as a phenotypic plasticity, result from differential gene expression potentially regulated at both the post-transcriptional level, mediated by small RNAs, and the transcriptional level.
Results
Here, using high-throughput sequencing, we characterize the small RNA transcriptome in the locust. We identified 50 conserved microRNA families by similarity searching against miRBase, and a maximum of 185 potential locust-specific microRNA family candidates were identified using our newly developed method independent of locust genome sequence. We also demonstrate conservation of microRNA*, and evolutionary analysis of locust microRNAs indicates that the generation of miRNAs in locusts is concentrated along three phylogenetic tree branches: bilaterians, coelomates, and insects. Our study identified thousands of endogenous small interfering RNAs, some of which were of transposon origin, and also detected many Piwi-interacting RNA-like small RNAs. Comparison of small RNA expression patterns of the two phases showed that longer small RNAs were expressed more abundantly in the solitary phase and that each category of small RNAs exhibited different expression profiles between the two phases.
Conclusions
The abundance of small RNAs in the locust might indicate a long evolutionary history of post-transcriptional gene expression regulation, and differential expression of small RNAs between the two phases might further disclose the molecular mechanism of phase changes.
