Analysis of the antennal transcriptome and olfaction-related genes of Scopula subpunctaria (Herrich-Schaeffer)

In this study, the transcriptome of male and female adult antennae of Scopula subpunctaria was sequenced using Illumina HiSeq 4000 platform. A total of 93335 unigenes with N50 length of 1151 bp were obtained. After annotating for unigenes in gene function database, 23581 unigenes were annotated in six databases. Of these, 39.96% unigenes were annotated in the NR database, which exhibited the highest similarity (20.32%) to those of Bombyx mori. A total of 10718 unigenes were annotated in the GO database, which were categorized into three groups (biological process, cellular components and molecular function) and 46 subcategories. In the KEGG database, 5464 unigenes were assigned to 38 known metabolic pathways of subcategories. Among these, 10.64% unigenes were involved in the signal transduction pathway and it was the highest. Based on the annotation information, 60 olfaction-related genes fom S. subpunctaria including 17 odorant binding protein genes (OBPs), 13 chemosensory protein genes (CSPs), 14 olfactory receptor genes (ORs), 13 ionotropic receptor genes (IRs) and 3 sensory neuron membrane protein genes (SNMPs) were obtained. The FPKM value was utilized to analyze the gene expression of SsubOBPs and SsubCSPs. The findings indicated that the gene expression of SsubOBP2 and SsubOBP3 were highly expressed in the adult antennae of S. subpunctaria females and males (FPKM > 2000), and SsubCSP4, SsubCSP7 and SsubCSP9 were expressed with high abundance in the adult antennae of both sexes (FPKM > 900). This study obtained the antennal transcriptome data of S. subpunctaria for the first time, and identified olfaction-related genes, providing a molecular foundation for further research into the olfactory mechanisms of S. subpunctaria.