| Summary: | 碩士 === 輔仁大學 === 生命科學系碩士班 === 106 === Pseudoregma bambucicola Takahashi is a social aphid characterized with host alternation and gall formation. It reproduces pathenogenetically in most of the generations within a life cycle. It also performs very complex polyphenism. During the process of host alternation, P. bambucicola utilizes Styrax suberifolius as its primary host plant and forms the gall to live and feed inside. Bamboos are used as its secondary host plant and P. bambucicola prefers to feed on the surface of the bamboo stem. On both the primary and the secondary host plants, P. bambucicola produces wingless females, winged females and soldiers. Among all these three types of aphids, soldiers are the most specialized morphs because it is sterile and with specialized defensive morphology and behavior. To uncover the molecular level characteristics of soldiers and non-soldiers, we compared the Next Generation Sequencing based transcriptome data between soldiers and wingless adults from both kinds of host plants. Weighted deviation was used to filter those differentially expressed genes. GO (Gene Ontology) enrichment was used to analyze the significantly expressed GO annotation. Finally, WEGO (Web Gene Ontology Annotation Plot) was used to compare and plot GO annotation results. We found 300~800 differentially expressed genes from different combinations of comparisons. After deleting genes without GO annotations, there were 100~300 differentially expressed genes left. After GO significance analysis and classification, we found that some genes classified within the category of Structural Molecular Activity are related to cuticle composition. We found that soldiers and wingless adults of P. bambucicola both have specific differentially expressed genes within the category of structural constituent of cuticle. Aphids from different host plants also reveal specific differentially expressed genes within the category of structural constituent of cuticle. In conclusion, we found that soldiers, regardless of host plants, of P. bambucicola have a specific differentially expressed gene which is related to cuticle constitution, and soldiers on bamboos have a specific differentially expressed gene which is related to muscle constitution.
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