Research article

Identification of genes differentially expressed during larval molting and metamorphosis of Helicoverpa armigera

Du-Juan Dong^* , Hong-Juan He^* , Lian-Qin Chai^* , Xiao-Juan Jiang , Jin-Xing Wang and Xiao-Fan Zhao

School of Life Sciences, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, China

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

BMC Developmental Biology 2007, 7:73doi:10.1186/1471-213X-7-73

Published:	25 June 2007

Abstract

Background

Larval molting and metamorphosis are important physiological processes in the life cycle of the holometabolous insect. We used suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) to identify genes differentially expressed during larval molting and metamorphosis.

Results

We performed SSH between tissues from a variety of developmental stages, including molting 5th and feeding 6th instar larvae, metamorphically committed and feeding 5th instar larvae, and feeding 5th instar and metamorphically committed larvae. One hundred expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were identified and included 73 putative genes with similarity to known genes, and 27 unknown ESTs. SSH results were further characterized by dot blot, Northern blot, and RT-PCR. The expression levels of eleven genes were found to change during larval molting or metamorphosis, suggesting a functional role during these processes.

Conclusion

These results provide a new set of genes expressed specifically during larval molt or metamorphosis that are candidates for further studies into the regulatory mechanisms of those stage-specific genes during larval molt and metamorphosis