Protein feeding mediates sex pheromone biosynthesis in an insect

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Data availability
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Abstract

Protein feeding is critical for male reproductive success in many insect species. However, how protein affects the reproduction remains largely unknown. Using Bactrocera dorsalis as the study model, we investigated how protein feeding regulated sex pheromone synthesis. We show that protein ingestion is essential for sex pheromone synthesis in male. While protein feeding or deprivation did not affect Bacillus abundance, transcriptome analysis revealed that sarcosine dehydrogenase (Sardh) in protein-fed males regulates the biosynthesis of sex pheromones by increasing glycine and threonine (sex pheromone precursors) contents. RNAi-mediated loss-of-function of Sardh decreases glycine, threonine and sex pheromone contents and results in decreased mating ability in males. The study links male feeding behavior with discrete patterns of gene expression that plays role in sex pheromone synthesis, which in turn translate to successful copulatory behavior of the males.

Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. RNA-sequencing and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing data have been deposited in the Genome Sequence Read Archive Database of the National Genomics Data Center (BioProject PRJCA010569, PRJCA010560 and PRJCA010555).

The following data sets were generated

1. Daifeng Cheng
(2022) Post-teneral protein rectum transcriptome
BioProject, PRJCA010569.

https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/bioproject/browse/PRJCA010569
1. Daifeng Cheng
(2022) Rectum transcriptome at different development stage
BioProject, PRJCA010560.

https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/bioproject/browse/PRJCA010560
1. Daifeng Cheng
(2022) Effect of post-teneral protein on sex pheromone
BioProject, PRJCA010555.

https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/bioproject/browse/PRJCA010555

Article and author information

Author details

Shiyu Gui

Department of Entomology, South China Agricultural University, Guanghzou, China

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Boaz Yuval

Department of Entomology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Tobias Engl

Department of Insect Symbiosis, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Yongyue Lu

Department of Entomology, South China Agricultural University, Guanghzou, China

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Daifeng Cheng

Department of Entomology, South China Agricultural University, Guanghzou, China

For correspondence
chengdaifeng@scau.edu.cn

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0918-5913

Funding

The national natural science foundation of China (3212200346)

Daifeng Cheng

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.