Skip to main content
Advertisement
Browse Subject Areas
?

Click through the PLOS taxonomy to find articles in your field.

For more information about PLOS Subject Areas, click here.

  • Loading metrics

Characterization of Head Transcriptome and Analysis of Gene Expression Involved in Caste Differentiation and Aggression in Odontotermes formosanus (Shiraki)

  • Qiuying Huang,

    Affiliation Hubei Insect Resources Utilization and Sustainable Pest Management Key Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

  • Pengdong Sun,

    Affiliation Hubei Insect Resources Utilization and Sustainable Pest Management Key Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

  • Xuguo Zhou ,

    xuguozhou@uky.edu (XZ); ioir@mail.hzau.edu.cn (CL)

    Affiliation Department of Entomology, S-225 Agricultural Science Center N, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America

  • Chaoliang Lei

    xuguozhou@uky.edu (XZ); ioir@mail.hzau.edu.cn (CL)

    Affiliation Hubei Insect Resources Utilization and Sustainable Pest Management Key Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

Abstract

Background

The subterranean termite Odontotermes formosanus (Shiraki) is a serious insect pest of trees and dams in China. To date, very little is known about genomic or transcriptomic data for caste differentiation and aggression in O. formosanus. Hence, studies on transcriptome and gene expression profiling are helpful to better understand molecular basis underlying caste differentiation and aggressive behavior in O. formosanus.

Methodology and Principal Findings

Using the Illumina sequencing, we obtained more than 57 million sequencing reads derived from the heads of O. formosanus. These reads were assembled into 116,885 unique sequences (mean size  =  536 bp). Of the unigenes, 30,646 (26.22%) had significant similarity with proteins in the NCBI nonredundant protein database and Swiss-Prot database (E-value<10−5). Of these annotated unigenes, 10,409 and 9,009 unigenes were assigned to gene ontology categories and clusters of orthologous groups, respectively. In total, 19,611 (25.52%) unigenes were mapped onto 242 pathways using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes Pathway database (KEGG). A total of 11,661 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were predicted from the current transcriptome database. Moreover, we detected seven putative genes involved in caste differentiation and six putative genes involved in aggression. The qPCR analysis showed that there were significant differences in the expression levels of the three putative genes hexamerin 2, β-glycosidase and bicaudal D involved in caste differentiation and one putative gene Cyp6a20 involved in aggression among workers, soldiers and larvae of O. formosanus.

Conclusions

To our knowledge, this is the first study to characterize the complete head transcriptome of a higher fungus-cultivating termite using high-throughput sequencing. Our study has provided the comprehensive sequence resources available for elucidating molecular basis underlying caste differentiation and aggressive behavior in O. formosanus.

Introduction

Termites are a group of eusocial insects of immense ecological and economical importance. In recent years, studies of genomics and gene expression in termites have attracted increasing interest [1][5]. Advances on functional genomics research in termites are helpful to better understand unique and interesting features of termite biology [6], such as understanding molecular basis of aggression and caste differentiation in termites [7].

The subterranean termite, Odontotermes formosanus (Shiraki) (Isoptera: Termitidae), is a higher fungus-cultivating termite that distributes throughout Southeast Asia, including China, Burma, India, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam [8]. This termite species is an important pest of crops, plantations, and forests in China. Furthermore, this species can build large subterranean cavities inside earthen dikes and dams, thereby damaging piping, which can result in the collapse of the dikes and dams [9]. To date, the patterns of caste differentiation and intercolonial aggression in O. formosanus have been studied [10][12], but there are no research reports about molecular basis underlying its caste differentiation and aggression. Despite its significant importance of biology and economics, genomic sequence resources available for O. formosanus are very scarce. Up to June 28th, 2012, we found that there are about 140,730 ESTs and 26,207 nucleotide sequences in NCBI databases for Coptotermes, followed by Reticulitermes (24,681 ESTs and 4,664 nucleotide sequences), Macrotermes (1,708 ESTs and 822 nucleotide sequences) and Cryptotermes (3 ESTs and 323 nucleotide sequences). However, there are no ESTs and only 818 nucleotide sequences deposited in NCBI databases for Odontotermes. Therefore, application of the advanced sequencing technology to characterize transcriptome and obtain more ESTs of Odontotermes is very necessary.

Currently, some advanced sequencing technologies, such as Illumina sequencing and 454 pyrosequencing, have been used to carry out high-throughput sequencing and have rapidly improved the efficiency and speed of mining genes [13][18]. Moreover, these sequencing technologies have greatly improved the sensitivity of gene expression profiling, and is expected to promote collaborative and comparative genomics studies [19], [20]. Thus, we selected the Illumina sequencing to characterize the complete head transcriptome of O. formosanus.

In the present study, a total of 57,271,634 raw sequencing reads were generated from one plate (8 lanes) of sequencing. After transcriptome assembly, 221,728 contigs were obtained, and these contigs were further clustered into 116,885 unigenes with 9,040 distinct clusters and 107,845 distinct singletons. In the head transcriptome database, we predicted simple sequence repeats (SSRs), and detected putative genes involved in caste differentiation and aggression. Furthermore, we compared the gene expression profiles of the three putative genes involved in caste differentiation and one putative gene involved in aggression among workers, soldiers and larvae of O. formosanus. The assembled, annotated transcriptome sequences and gene expression profiles provide an invaluable resource for the identification of genes involved in caste differentiation, aggressive behavior and other biological characters in O. formosanus and other termite species.

Results and Discussion

Illumina Paired-end Sequencing and de novo Assemble

Total RNA was extracted from the worker heads of the different colonies. Using Illumina paired-end sequencing technology, a total of 57,271,634 raw sequencing reads were generated from a 200 bp insert library. An assembler, Trinity was employed for de novo assembly [21]. After stringent quality check and data cleaning, approximately 54 million high-quality reads were obtained with 98.09% Q20 bases (base quality more than 20). Based on the high quality reads, a total of 221,728 contigs were assembled with an average length of 302 bp. The size distribution of these contigs is shown in Figure 1. Then the reads were mapped back to contigs, with paired-end reads we were able to detect contigs from the same transcript as well as the distances between these contigs. After clustering these unigenes using TGICL software [22], contigs can finally generate 116,885 unigenes with 9,040 distinct clusters and 107,845 distinct singletons (Table 1). The length of assembled unigenes ranged from 150 to 17,355 bp. There were 83,002 unigenes (71.01%) with length varying from 150 to 500 bp, 26,916 unigenes (23.03%) in the length range of 501 to 1500 bp, and 6967 unigenes (5.96%) with length more than 1500 bp. The size distribution of these unigenes is showed in Figure 2.

thumbnail
Figure 1. Length distribution of Odontotermes formosanus contigs.

Histogram presentation of sequence-length distribution for significant matches that was found. The x-axis indicates sequence sizes from 200 nt to >3000 nt. The y-axis indicates the number of contigs for every given size.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g001

thumbnail
Figure 2. Length distribution of Odontotermes formosanus unigenes.

Histogram presentation of sequence-length distribution for significant matches that was found. The x-axis indicates sequence sizes from 200 nt to >3000 nt. The y-axis indicates the number of uingenes for every given size. The results of sequence-length matches (with a cut-off E-value of 1.0E-5) in the nr databases are greater among the longer assembled sequences.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g002

thumbnail
Table 1. Summary of the head transcriptome of Odontotermes formosanus.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.t001

Functional Annotation by Searching Against Public Databases

For validation and annotation of assembled unigenes, sequence similarity search was conducted against NCBI non-redundant protein (nr) database and Swiss-Prot protein database using BLASTX algorithm with an E-value threshold of 10−5. By this approach, out of 116,885 unigenes, 30,427 genes (26.03% of all distinct sequences) returned an above cut-off BLAST result (Table S1). Because of the relatively short length of distinct gene sequences and lacking genome information in O. formosanus, most of the 86,459 assembled sequences could not be matched to known genes (73.97%). Figure 3 indicates that the percentage of matched sequences in nr databases increased as assembled sequences got longer. Specifically, an 87.77% of match efficiency was observed for sequences longer than 2,000 bp, whereas the match efficiency decreased to 39.67% for those ranging from 500 to 1,000 bp and to 14.95% for sequences between 100 to 500 bp (Figure 3). The result indicates that the proportion of sequences with matches in the nr database is greater among the longer assembled sequences. The E-value distribution of the top hits in the nr database ranged from 0 to 1.0E−5 (Figure 4A). The similarity distribution of the top BLAST hits for each sequence ranged from 17% to 100% (Figure 4B). For species distribution, 16.0% of the distinct sequences have top matches trained with sequences from Tribolium castaneum (Figure 4C). Of all the unigenes, 22,895 (19.59%) had BLAST hits in Swiss-Prot database and matched to 12,497 unique protein entries.

thumbnail
Figure 3. Effect of query sequence length on the percentage of sequences with significant matches.

The proportion of sequences with matches (with a cut-off E-value of 1.0E-5) in nr database is greater among the longer assembled sequences.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g003

thumbnail
Figure 4. Characteristics of homology search of Illumina sequences against the nr database.

(A) E-value distribution of BLAST hits for each unique sequence with a cut-off E-value of 1.0E-5. (B) Similarity distribution of the top BLAST hits for each sequence. (C) Species distribution is shown as a percentage of the total homologous sequences with an E-value of at least 1.0E-5. We used the first hit of each sequence for analysis.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g004

Functional Classification by GO and COG

GO functional analyses provide GO functional classification annotation [23]. On the basis of nr annotation, the Blast2GO program was used to obtain GO annotation for unigenes [24]. Then the WEGO software was used to perform GO functional classification for these unigenes [25]. In total, 10,409 unigenes with BLAST matches to known proteins were assigned to gene ontology classes with 52,610 functional terms. Of them, assignments to the biological process made up the majority (25,528, 48.52%) followed by cellular component (17,165, 32.63%) and molecular function (9,917, 18.85%) (Figure 5). Under the biological process category, cellular process (4,696 unigenes, 18.40%) and metabolic process (3,726 unigenes, 14.60%) were prominently represented (Figure 5). In the category of cellular component, cell (5,884 unigenes) and cell part (5,243unigenes) represented the majorities of category (Figure 5). For the molecular function category, binding (4,223 unigenes) and catalytic activity (3,869 unigenes) was prominently represented (Figure 5).

thumbnail
Figure 5. Histogram presentation of Gene Ontology classification.

The results are summarized in three main categories: biological process, cellular component and molecular function. The right y-axis indicates the number of genes in a category. The left y-axis indicates the percentage of a specific category of genes in that main category.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g005

The Cluster of Orthologous Groups (COG) is a database where the orthologous gene products were classified. All unigenes were aligned to the COG database to predict and classify possible functions [26]. Out of 30,427 nr hits, 9,009 sequences were assigned to the COG classifications (Figure 6). Among the 25 COG function categories, the cluster for General function prediction only (3,519, 20.90%) represented the largest group, followed by replication, recombination and repair (1,359, 8.07%) (Figure 6).

thumbnail
Figure 6. Histogram presentation of clusters of orthologous groups (COG) classification.

Out of 30,427 nr hits, 9,009 sequences have a COG classification among the 25 categories.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g006

Functional Classification by KEGG

The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Pathway database records the networks of molecular interactions in the cells, and their variants of them specific to particular organisms. In order to identify the biological pathways involved, the assembled unigenes were annotated with corresponding Enzyme commission (EC) numbers from BLASTX alignments against the KEGG database [27]. Firstly, based on a comparison against the KEGG database using BLASTX with an E-value cutoff of <10−5, out of the 116,885 unigenes, 19,611 (16.78%) had significant matches in the database and were assigned to 242 KEGG pathways. The pathways most represented by unique sequences were metabolic pathways (2,282 members), Huntington’s disease (683 members), purine metabolism (661 members), RNA transport (629 members), and regulation of actin cytoskeleton (306 members).

Taken together, 30,643 unique sequence-based annotations had BLAST scores exceeding our threshold (≤1e-5) in nr, Swiss-Prot and KEGG databases (Figure 7A). The Venn diagram (Figure 7B) shows that an additional 3 unigenes were annotated by domain-based alignments. Overall, 30,646 unique sequence-based or domain-based annotations using the four selected public databases were assigned to O. formosanus unigenes (26.2%). Among them, 8,458 unigenes had hits in all four public databases with relatively defined functional annotations of the assembled unigenes (Table S2). These annotations provide a valuable resource for investigating specific processes, structures, functions, and pathways in caste differentiation.

thumbnail
Figure 7. Distribution of similarity search results showed by Venn diagrams.

(A) The number of unique sequence-based annotations is the sum of unique best BLASTX hits from the nr, Swiss-Prot and KEGG databases (E-value≤1.0E-5), respectively. The overlap regions among the three circles contain the number of unigenes that share BLASTX similarity with respective databases. (B) Number of all annotated Odontotermes formosanus unigenes is figured out based on the summation of both unique sequence-based annotations and unique domain-based annotations. The circle “a” and “b” indicate the two subsets of O. formosanus unigenes with sequence-based annotations and domain-based annotations, respectively.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g007

Protein Coding Region Prediction (CDS)

To further analyze unigene function at the protein level, we predicted the protein coding region (CDS) of all unigenes. First, we matched unigene sequences against protein databases by using BLASTX (E-value<0.00001) in the order: nr-Swissprot-KEGG-COG. Unigene sequences with hits in a database will not be included in the next round of search against another database. These BLAST results were used as information to extract CDS from unigene sequences and translate them into peptide sequences. In addition, BLAST results information is also used to train ESTScan [28], [29]. CDS of unigenes with no hit on BLAST search were predicted by ESTScan and then translated into peptide sequences. In total, 30,606 and 6,429 unigenes were predicted by using BLASTX and ESTScan, respectively. The histogram as seen in Figure S1 and Figure S2 shows the length distribution of CDS predicted from BLAST and ESTScan results. In general, as the sequence length increases, the number of CDS becomes gradually reduced. This is consistent with the results of unigene assembly.

Frequency and Distribution of EST-SSRs in the Head Transcriptome

In total, 10,052 sequences containing 11,661 SSRs were predicted from 116,885 consensus sequences (Table S3). The EST-SSR frequency in the head transcriptome was 9.98%. The most abundant type of repeat motif was dinucleotide (39.66%), followed by trinucleotide (38.88%), tetranucleotide (16.57%), pentanucleotide (3.30%), and hexanucleotide (1.59%) repeat units (Table 2). The frequencies of EST-SSRs with different numbers of tandem repeats were calculated and shown in Table 2. The SSRs with six tandem repeats (21.14%) were the most common, followed by five tandem repeats (20.42%), seven tandem repeats (17.66%), and four tandem repeats (11.59%). The SSRs predicted in this study could lay a platform for better understanding the molecular ecology of O. formosanus as reported in the other termite species [30]. However, all the predicted SSRs need to be verified to exclude false positives and sequencing errors.

thumbnail
Table 2. Frequency of EST-SSRs in the head transcriptome of Odontotermes formosanus.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.t002

Putative Genes Involved in Caste Differentiation

The progress in molecular, genomic, and integrative biology have greatly improved understanding molecular basis underlying caste differentiation in termites [31]. From the current transcriptome database, we obtained seven putative genes with significant hits to 7 different genes known to be involved in termite caste differentiation by BLASTX analyses (Table 3). The previous RNAi analysis showed that the two genes (hexamerin 1 and 2) participate in the regulation of caste differentiation in Reticulitermes flavipes [1]. The gene, Neofem2 coding for β-glycosidase, was necessary for the queen to suppress worker reproduction [4]. The gene, Rf β-NAC-1 homologous to bicaudal, might affect the generalized soldier body plan [32]. In R. flavipes, multiple fat-body-related CYP4 genes were differentially expressed in workers after juvenile hormone (JH) treatment [33]. The gene, Nts19-1 which encodes putative homologues of the geranylgeranyl diphosphate (GGPP) synthase gene, is highly expressed exclusively in soldier head of Nasutitermes takasagoensis [34]. The head cDNAs analysis revealed that Cox III is differentially expressed between castes of R. santonensis, with lowest levels in the soldiers [35].

thumbnail
Table 3. Putative genes involved in castes differentiation.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.t003

In this study, we selected three genes homologous to hexamerin 2, β-glycosidase and bicaudal D to analyze their expression differences among workers, soldiers and larvae of O. formosanus (Table S4), in order to detect whether the three genes are related to the caste differentiation of O. formosanus. The quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) analysis showed that there was a significant difference in expression level of hexamerin 2 among workers, soldiers and larvae (P<0.05). The hexamerin 2 expression level in larvae was significantly higher than workers and soldiers, but there was no significant difference between workers and soldiers (Figure 8A). The two genes, hexamerin 1 and 2, have a “status-quo” presoldier-inhibitory function in workers [1]. In this study, the highest expression level of hexamerin 2 in larvae suggests that most of larvae might develop into workers rather than soldiers.

The results indicated that there was a significant difference in expression level of β-glycosidase among workers, soldiers and larvae (P<0.05). The β-glycosidase expression level in workers was significantly higher than larvae and soldiers, but there was no significant difference between larvae and soldiers (Figure 8B). The gene, Neofem2 coding for β-glycosidase, was highly overexpressed in female neotenics compared with workers in C. secundus [36]. Although the expression level of β-glycosidase in reproductives of O. formosanus was not analyzed in this study, our results suggest that the higher expression level of β-glycosidase in workers might be related to the function of breaking down polysaccharides [37].

thumbnail
Figure 8. The qPCR analysis of putative genes involved in caste differentiation and aggression.

The x-axis indicates three different castes. The y-axis indicates the relative expression value of uingene. (A) mRNA relative expression values for hexamerin 2. (B) mRNA relative expression values for β-glycosidase. (C) mRNA relative expression values for bicaudal D. (D) mRNA relative expression values for Cyp6a20. Letters above each bar denote significantly different groups. Significant differences were identified by a one-way ANOVA with means separated using Tukey’s HSD (P<0.05).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.g008

Our results showed that there was a significant difference in expression level of bicaudal D among workers, soldiers and larvae (P<0.05). The bicaudal D expression level in larvae was significantly higher than workers and soldiers, but there was no significant difference between workers and soldiers (Figure 8C). In contrast, the expression level of Rf β-NAC-1 homologous to bicaudal was the highest in soldiers of R. flavipes, indicating that Rf β-NAC-1 in soldiers might influence the generalized soldier body plan [32]. However, our results suggest that bicaudal D might play an important role in larval development in O. formosanus.

Putative Genes Involved in Aggression

Aggressive behavior is important for the survival and reproduction of many animal species [38][40], and is affected by genetic and environmental factors [41]. There is obvious interspecific and intercolonial aggression in termites, [42]. However, very little is known about molecular mechanisms underlying aggression in termites. From the current transcriptome database, we obtained six putative genes with significant hits to 6 different genes known to be involved in aggression by BLASTX analyses (Table 4). The gene Cyp6a20 encoding a cytochrome P450, has been shown to modulate aggression in Drosophila [43], [44]. The drug-induced increases of 5-HT in the brain increased Drosophila aggression [45], while the reduction of the neurotransmitter octopamine decreased Drosophila aggression [46]. The neurotransmitter dopamine also modulates aggressive behavior in Drosophila [47]. The inhibition of MAOA activity in mice leads to decreased aggression [48].

In this study, we selected the gene homologous to Cyp6a20 to analyze its expression differences among workers, soldiers and larvae of O. formosanus (Table S4), in order to detect whether this gene is involved in aggression regulation in O. formosanus. Our results showed that there was a significant difference in expression level of Cyp6a20 among workers, soldiers and larvae (P<0.05). The Cyp6a20 expression level in larvae was significantly higher than workers and soldiers, and the Cyp6a20 expression level in workers was significantly higher than soldiers (Figure 8D). Additionally, our behavioral observations found that aggressiveness of soldiers are the highest among all the castes of O. formosanus [12]. The previous studies showed that the Cyp6a20 expression levels might be negatively correlated with aggression [43][44]. Therefore, we suggest that Cyp6a20 may be a candidate gene that downregulates aggression in O. formosanus.

Conclusions

We have generated a comprehensive head transcriptome of O. formosanus using the Illumina sequencing. A single run produced more than 116,885 unigene sequences with 30,646 sequences with an above cut-off BLAST result. A total of 11,661 SSRs were predicted from the head transcriptome database. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to characterize the complete head transcriptome of a higher termite using Illumina sequencing. Our study has changed the current status of lacking genetic information for O. formosanus, and has provided comprehensive sequence resources available for elucidating molecular mechanisms underlying caste differentiation and aggression in O. formosanus.

Materials and Methods

Sample Collection and Preparation

The O. formosanus colonies were collected from the three forests (Shizi, Yujia and Luojia) in Wuhan city, China. The three forests are not privately-owned or protected in any way, and O. formosanus is not endangered or protected in any way. Thus, no specific permissions are required for these locations/activities in this study. Healthy workers were selected from these colonies. We used scalpel to separate heads from bodies of workers. Then, head samples were immediately stored in liquid nitrogen for further processing.

RNA Isolation, cDNA Library Construction and Illumina Sequencing

For Illumina sequencing, the total RNA of the head sample was extracted using TRIzol reagent (TaKaRa) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. The mixed RNA extract was subjected to Solexa sequencing analysis at the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI; Shenzhen, China). RNA quality and quantity were verified using a NanoDrop 1000 spectrophotometer and an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer prior to further processing at BGI, and RNA integrity was confirmed with a number value of 8.6. The samples for transcriptome analysis were prepared using Illumina’s kit following manufacturer’s recommendations. Briefly, mRNA was purified from 44.4µg of total RNA using oligo (dT) magnetic beads. Fragmentation buffer was added for generation of short mRNA fragments. Taking these short fragments as templates, random hexamer-primer was used to synthesize the first-strand cDNA. The second-strand cDNA is synthesized using buffer, dNTPs, RNaseH and DNA polymerase I, respectively. Short fragments are purified with QiaQuick PCR extraction kit and resolved with EB buffer for end reparation and adding poly (A). After that, the short fragments were connected with sequencing adapters. And, after the agarose gel electrophoresis, the suitable fragments were selected for the PCR amplification as templates. At last, the library could be sequenced using Illumina HiSeq™ 2000.

De novo Assembly of Sequencing Reads and Sequence Clustering

The cDNA library was sequenced on the Illumina sequencing platform. Image deconvolution and quality value calculations were performed using the Illumina GA pipeline 1.3. The raw reads were cleaned by removing adaptor sequences, empty reads and low quality sequences (reads with unknown sequences ‘N’). De novo transcriptome assembly was carried out with short reads assembling program – Trinity [21]. Trinity firstly combined reads with certain length of overlap to form longer fragments, which are called contigs. Then the reads were mapped back to contigs; with paired-end reads it was able to detect contigs from the same transcript as well as the distances between these contigs. Trinity connected the contigs, and gets sequences that cannot be extended on either end. Such sequences were defined as unigenes. When multiple samples from a same species were sequenced, unigenes from each sample’s assembly could be taken into further process of sequence splicing and redundancy removing with sequence clustering software to acquire non-redundant unigenes as long as possible.

Analysis of Illumina Sequencing Results

Unigene sequences were firstly aligned by BLASTX to databases like nr, Swiss-Prot, KEGG and COG (E-value <0.00001), retrieving proteins with the highest sequence similarity with the given unigenes along with their protein functional annotations, the results about this were included in the folder annotation. With nr annotation, we used Blast2GO program to get GO annotation of unigenes. After getting GO annotation for every unigene [24], we used WEGO software to do GO functional classification for all unigenes and to understand the distribution of gene functions of the species from the macro level [25]. With the help of KEGG database, we could further study genes’ biological complex behaviors, and by KEGG annotation we could get pathway annotation for unigenes.

When predicting the CDS, we first aligned unigenes to nr, then Swiss-Prot, then KEGG, and finally COG. Unigenes aligned to a higher priority database will not be aligned to lower priority database. The alignments end when all alignments were finished. Proteins with highest ranks in BLAST results were taken to decide the coding region sequences of unigenes, and then the coding region sequences were translated into amino sequences with the standard codon table. So both the nucleotide sequences (5′–3′) and amino sequences of the unigene coding region were acquired. Unigenes that cannot be aligned to any database are scanned by ESTScan, producing nucleotide sequence (5′–3′) direction and amino sequence of the predicted coding region [28].

EST-SSR Detection

Putative SSR markers were predicted among the 116,885 unigenes using Serafer [49]. The parameters were adjusted for identification of perfect di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, and hexanucleotide motifs with a minimum of 6, 5, 4, 4, and 4 repeats, respectively. Mononucleotide repeats were ignored because it was difficult to distinguish genuine mononucleotide repeats from polyadenylation products and single nucleotide stretch errors generated by sequencing.

Gene Mining and Quantitative Real Time PCR

Total RNA was extracted from heads of workers, soldiers and larvae using TRIzol following the manufacturer’s protocol. Approximately 1 µg of DNase I-treated total RNA was converted into single-stranded cDNA using a PrimeScript RT regent reagent Kit (perfect real time) (TaKaRa, Dalian, China). The cDNA products were then diluted 80-fold with deionized water before use as a template in real-time PCR. The quantitative reaction was performed on a My IQ™ 2 Two color Real-time PCR Detection System (Bio-Rad, USA) using SYBR Premix Ex Taq™ II (TaKaRa, Dalian, China). The reaction mixture (20 µL) contained 2×SYBR Premix Ex Taq™ II 10 µL, 0.4 µM each of the forward and reverse primers, and 2 µL of template cDNA. PCR amplification was performed under the following conditions: 95°C for 30 s, followed by 40 cycles of 95°C for 5 s and 60°C for 30 s, at last by 55°C for 30 s. The expression of four interesting genes were normalized against an internal reference gene, β-actin. Primers were designed using Beacon Designer 7.7 software (primer sequences upon request) (Table S4). For caste-specific expression assay, expression in workers was used as the calibrator for each gene. The relative gene expression was calculated using the 2−ΔΔCt method [50]. All qPCR were repeated in three biological and three technical replications. Differences in expression level of the four genes among workers, soldiers and larvae were tested for significance by a one-way ANOVA with means separated using Tukey’s HSD (SPSS Inc., 1989–2002).

Data Deposition

The Illumina sequencing reads of worker heads of O. formosanus were submitted to NCBI Sequence Read Archive under the accession number of SRA055431.

Supporting Information

Figure S1.

Length distribution of CDS predicted from BLAST. The x-axis shows read size and the y-axis shows the number of reads for each given size.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s001

(TIF)

Figure S2.

Length distribution of CDS predicted from ESTScan. The x-axis shows read size and the y-axis shows the number of reads for each given size.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s002

(TIF)

Table S1.

Top BLAST hits from NCBI nr database. BLAST results against the NCBI nr database for all the distinct sequences with a cut-off E-value above 10−5 are shown.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s003

(XLSX)

Table S2.

BLAST hits from the four databases (nr, KEGG, COG, Swiss-Prot).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s004

(XLSX)

Table S3.

Predicted EST-SSRs in the head transcriptome of Odontotermes formosanus .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s005

(XLSX)

Table S4.

Interesting gene ID in the head transcriptome and primers used for qPCR.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050383.s006

(DOC)

Acknowledgments

We thank the technical support for Illumina sequencing and initial data analysis from Beijing Genome Institute at Shenzhen, China. We thank Drs. Keyan Zhu-Salzman and Weiwei Zheng, and the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: QH PS XZ CL. Performed the experiments: QH PS. Analyzed the data: QH PS XZ CL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: QH PS CL. Wrote the paper: QH PS XZ CL.

References

  1. 1. Zhou XG, Oi FM, Scharf ME (2006) Social exploitation of hexamerin: RNAi reveals a major caste-regulatory factor in termites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 4499–4504.
  2. 2. Husseneder C, McGregor C, Lang AP, Collier R, Delatte J (2012) Transcriptome profiling of female alates and egg-laying queens of the Formosan subterranean termite. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part D 7: 14–27.
  3. 3. Scharf ME, Wu-Scharf D, Zhou XG, Pittendrigh BR, Bennett GW (2005) Gene expression profiles among immature and adult reproductive castes of the termite Reticulitermes flavipes. Insect Molecular Biology 14: 31–44.
  4. 4. Korb J, Weil T, Hoffmann K, Foster KR, Rehli M (2009) A gene necessary for reproductive suppression in termites. Science 324: 758.
  5. 5. Zhang D, Lax AR, Henrissat B, Coutinho P, Katiya N, et al. (2012) Carbohydrate-active enzymes revealed in Coptotermes formosanus (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae) transcriptome. Insect Molecular Biology 21: 235–245.
  6. 6. Leonardo FC, da Cunha AF, da Silva MJ, Carazzolle MF, Costa-Leonardo AM, et al. (2011) Analysis of the workers head transcriptome of the Asian subterranean termite, Coptotermes gestroi. Bull Entomol Res 101: 383–391.
  7. 7. Miura T, Kamikouchi A, Sawata M, Takeuchi H, Natori S, et al. (1999) Soldier caste-specific gene expression in the mandibular glands of Hodotermopsis japonica (Isoptera: Termopsidae). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96: 13874–13879.
  8. 8. Huang FS, Zhu SM, Ping ZM, He XS, Li GX, et al.. (2000) Fauna Sinica: Insecta, Vol. 17: Isoptera. Beijing: Science Press.
  9. 9. Huang QY, Lei CL, Xue D (2006) Field evaluation of a fipronil bait against subterranean termite Odontotermes formosanus (Isoptera: Termitidae). Journal of Economic Entomology 99: 455–461.
  10. 10. Liu YZ, Tang GQ, Pan YZ, Chen LD, He YZ (1985) Observations on the reproductive caste of Odontotermes formosanus (Shiraki): Larval development and nuptial flight. Acta Entomologica Sinica 28: 111–114.
  11. 11. Cheng ML, Mo JC, Deng TF, Mao WG, Li D (2007) Biology and Ecology of Odontotermes formosanus in China (Isoptera: Termitidae). Sociobiology 50: 45–61.
  12. 12. Huang QY, Chen Y, Li JH, Lei CL (2007) Intercolony agonism in the subterranean termite Odontotermes formosanus (Isoptera: Termitidae). Sociobiology 50: 867–880.
  13. 13. Schuster SC (2008) Next-generation sequencing transforms today’s biology. Nature Methods 5: 16–18.
  14. 14. Ansorge WJ (2009) Next-generation DNA sequencing techniques. New Biotechnology 25: 195–203.
  15. 15. Bai X, Mamidala P, Rajarapu SP, Jones SC, Mittapalli O (2011) Transcriptomics of the bed bug (Cimex lectularius). PLoS One 6: e16336.
  16. 16. Huang W, Marth G (2008) EagleView: A genome assembly viewer for next-generation sequencing technologies. Genome Res 18: 1538–1543.
  17. 17. Wang XW, Luan JB, Li JM, Bao YY, Zhang CX, et al. (2010) De novo characterization of a whitefly transcriptome and analysis of its gene expression during development. BMC Genomics 2010 11: 400.
  18. 18. Zheng W, Peng T, He W, Zhang H (2012) High-Throughput Sequencing to Reveal Genes Involved in Reproduction and Development in Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae). PLoS One 7: e36463.
  19. 19. Blow N (2009) Transcriptomics: The digital generation. Nature 458: 239–242.
  20. 20. t Hoen PA, Ariyurek Y, Thygesen HH, Vreugdenhil E, Vossen RH, et al. (2008) Deep sequencing-based expression analysis shows major advances in robustness, resolution and inter-lab portability over five microarray platforms. Nucleic Acids Res 36: e141.
  21. 21. Grabherr MG, Haas BJ, Yassour M, Levin JZ, Thompson DA, et al. (2011) Full-length transcriptome assembly from RNA-Seq data without a reference genome. Nature Biotechnology 29: 644–652.
  22. 22. Pertea G, Huang X, Liang F, Antonescu V, Sultana R, et al. (2003) TIGR Gene Indices clustering tools (TGICL): a software system for fast clustering of large EST datasets. Bioinformatics 19: 651–652.
  23. 23. Ashburner M, Ball CA, Blake JA, Botstein D, Butler H, et al. (2000) Gene Ontology: tool for the unification of biology, the gene ontology consortium. Nature Genetics 25: 25–29.
  24. 24. Conesa A, Gotz S, Garrcia-Gomez M, Terol J, Talon M, et al. (2005) Blast2GO: a universal tool for annotation, visualization and analysis in functional genomics research. Bioinformatics 21: 3674–3676.
  25. 25. Ye J, Fang L, Zheng HK, Zhang Y, Chen J, et al. (2006) WEGO: a web tool for plotting GO annotations. Nucleic Acids Res 34: W293–W297.
  26. 26. Tatusov RL, Natale DA, Garkavtsev IV, Tatusova TA, Shankavaram UT, et al. (2001) The COG database: new developments in phylogenetic classification of proteins from complete genomes. Nucleic Acids Res 29: 22–28.
  27. 27. Kanehisa M, Goto S, Kawashima S, Okuno Y, Hattori M (2004) The KEGG resource for deciphering the genome. Nucleic Acids Res 32: D277–D280.
  28. 28. Iseli C, Jongeneel CV, Bucher P (1999) ESTScan: a program for detecting, evaluating, and reconstructing potential coding regions in EST sequences. Proc Int Conf Intell Syst Mol Biol 17: 138–148.
  29. 29. Ye J, McGinnis S, Madden TL (2006) BLAST: improvements for better sequence analysis. Nucleic Acids Res 34 (suppl 2)W6–W9.
  30. 30. Vargo EL, Husseneder C (2009) Biology of subterranean termites: insights from molecular studies of Reticulitermes and Coptotermes. Annual Review of Entomology 54: 379–403.
  31. 31. Miura T, Scharf ME (2011) Molecular basis underlying caste differentiation in termites. In: Bignell DE, Roisin Y, Lo N, editors. Biology of Termites: A Modern Sythesis. Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Dordrecht. 211–253.
  32. 32. Scharf ME, Wu-Scharf D, Pittendrigh BR, Bennett GW (2003) Caste-and development-associated gene expression in a lower termite. Genome Biology 4: R62.
  33. 33. Zhou X, Song C, Grzymala TL, Oi FM, Scharf ME (2006) Juvenile hormone and colony conditions differentially influence cytochrome P450 gene expression in the termite Reticulitermes flavipes. Insect Mol Biol 15: 749–761.
  34. 34. Hojo M, Matsumoto T, Miura T (2007) Cloning and expression of a geranylgeranyl diphosphate synthase gene: insights into the synthesis of termite defense secretion. Insect Mol Biol 16: 121–131.
  35. 35. Liénard MA, Lassance JM, Paulmier I, Picimbon JE, Löfstedt C (2006) Differential expression of cytochrome c oxidase subunit III gene in castes of the termite Reticulitermes santonensis. J Insect Physiol 52: 551–557.
  36. 36. Weil T, Rehli M, Korb J (2007) Molecular basis for the reproductive division of labour in a lower termite. BMC Genomics 8: 28.
  37. 37. Fischman BJ, Woodard SH, Robinson GE (2011) Molecular evolutionary analyses of insect societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (suppl 2)10847–10854.
  38. 38. Kravitz EA, Huber R (2003) Aggression in invertebrates. Curr Opin Neurobiol 13: 736–743.
  39. 39. Tecott LH, Barondes SH (1996) Behavioral genetics: Genes and aggressiveness. Curr Biol 6: 238–240.
  40. 40. Loeber R, Hay D (1997) Key issues in the development of aggression and violence from childhood to early adulthood. Annu Rev Psychol 48: 371–410.
  41. 41. Wang L, Dankert H, Perona P, Anderson DJ (2008) A common genetic target for environmental and heritable influences on aggressiveness in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 5657–5663.
  42. 42. Kaib M, Jmhasly P, Wilfert L, Durka W, Francke S, et al. (2004) Cuticular hydrocarbons and aggression in the termite Macrotermes Subhyalinus. J Chem Ecol 30: 365–385.
  43. 43. Wang L, Dankert H, Perona P, Anderson DJ (2008) A common genetic target for environmental and heritable influences on aggressiveness in Drosophila. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105: 5657–5663.
  44. 44. Dierick HA, Greenspan RJ (2006) Molecular analysis of flies selected for aggressive behavior. Nature Genetics 38: 1023–1031.
  45. 45. Dierick HA, Greenspan RJ (2007) Serotonin and neuropeptide F have opposite modulatory effects on fly aggression. Nature Genetics 39: 678–682.
  46. 46. Zhou C, Rao Y, Rao Y (2008) A subset of octopaminergic neurons are important for Drosophila aggression. Nature Neuroscience 11: 1059–1067.
  47. 47. Baier A, Wittek B, Brembs B (2002) Drosophila as a new model organism for the neurobiology of aggression? J Exp Biol 205: 1233–1240.
  48. 48. Florvall L, Ask AL, Ogren SO, Ross SB (1978) Selective monoamine oxidase inhibitors. 1. Compounds related to 4-aminophenethylamine. J Med Chem 21: 56–63.
  49. 49. Yuan DJ, Tu LL, Zhang XL (2011) Generation, annotation and analysis of first large-scale expressed sequence tags from developing fiber of Gossypium barbadense L. PLoS One. 6: e22758.
  50. 50. Van Hiel MB, Van Wielendaele P, Temmerman L, Van Soest S, Vuerinckx K, et al. (2009) Identification and validation of housekeeping genes in brains of the desert locust Schistocerca gregaria under different developmental conditions. BMC Mol Biol 10: 56.