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Transcriptomic responses in the spider mite Tetranychus urticae to bacterial infection

ABSTRACT: Genome annotation of the chelicerate Tetranychus urticae revealed the absence of many canonical immunity genes. T. urticae either does not mount an immune response or it induces uncharacterized immune pathways. To disentangle these two hypotheses, we performed transcriptomic analysis of mites injected with bacteria vs mites injected with LB-buffer. Two types of bacteria were injected: E. coli and B. megaterium and transcriptomes were sampled 3, 6 and 12 hrs after injection. We found no consistent differential expression after bacterial infection, supporting the hypothesis that spider mites do not mount an immune response. We hypothesize that the apparent absence of inducable immunity pathways in T. urticae is a result of relaxed selective pressure due to ecological factors.

ORGANISM(S): Tetranychus urticae

PROVIDER: GSE64199 | GEO | 2017/03/27

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA270373

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:While pathogen-induced immunity is comparatively well characterized, far less is known about plant defense responses to arthropod herbivores. To date, most molecular-genetic studies of plant-arthropod interactions have focused on insects. However, plant-feeding (phytophagous) mites are also pests of diverse plants, and mites induce different patterns of damage to plant tissues than do well-studied insects (e.g., Lepidopteran larvae or aphids). The two-spotted spider mite, Tetranychus urticae, is among the most significant mite pests in agriculture. T. urticae is an extreme generalist that has been documented on a staggering number of plant hosts (more than 1,100), and is renowned for the rapid evolution of pesticide resistance. To understand reciprocal interactions between T. urticae and a plant host at the molecular level, we examined mite herbivory using Arabidopsis thaliana. Despite differences in feeding guilds, we found that transcriptional responses of A. thaliana to mite herbivory generally resembled those observed for insect herbivores. In particular, defense to mites was mediated by jasmonic acid (JA) biosynthesis and signaling. Further, indole glucosinolates dramatically increased mite mortality and development times. Variation in both basal and activated levels of these defense pathways might also explain differences in mite damage and feeding success between A. thaliana accessions. On the herbivore side, a diverse set of genes associated with detoxification of xenobiotics was induced upon exposure to increasing levels of in planta indole glucosinolates. Our findings provide molecular insights into the nature of, and response to, herbivory for a representative of a major class of arthropod herbivores. We used microarray to assess global gene expresion in Arabidopsis thaliana upon Tetranychus urticae attack in two A. thaliana accessions: Bla-2, resistant to spider mite herbivory and Kon, susceptible to spider mite herbivory. 3 week old Arabidopsis thaliana plants were subjected to Tetranychus urticae attack through application of 10 mites for various periods of time (timecourse scenario) or hundreds of mites for 1 hour (feeding site scenario).

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Transcriptomic responses in the spider mite Tetranychus urticae to bacterial infection

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