Oral secretions from Mythimna separata insects specifically induce defence responses in maize as revealed by high‐dimensional biological data. (5th May 2016) - Qi, Jinfeng
Abstract: Attack from insect herbivores poses a major threat to plant survival, and accordingly, plants have evolved sophisticated defence systems. Maize is cultivated as a staple crop worldwide, and insect feeding causes large production losses. Despite its importance in agriculture, little is known about how maize reacts to insect herbivory. Taking advantage of advances in sequencing and mass spectrometry technology, we studied the response of maize to mechanical wounding and simulated Mythimna separata (a specialist insect) herbivory by applying its oral secretions (OS) to wounds. In comparison to the responses induced by mechanical wounding, OS elicited larger and longer‐lasting changes in the maize transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and phytohormones. Specifically, many genes, proteins and metabolites were uniquely induced or repressed by OS. Nearly 290 transcription factor genes from 39 families were involved in OS‐induced responses, and among these, more transcription factor genes were specifically regulated by OS than by wounding. This study provides a large‐scale omics dataset for understanding maize response to chewing insects and highlights the essential role of OS in plant–insect interactions. Abstract : As one of the most important crops in the world, maize suffers heavily from insect attack. However, the response of maize to insect feeding was largely unknown. Using transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics approaches, we found that maize specifically responds to the oral secretions of Mythimna separata with larger and longer‐lasting changes than to mechanical wounding. These large‐scale data provide a basis for understanding maize response to chewing insects and breeding new maize varieties with enhanced insect resistance.