Gain of oenocyte expression of a conserved fatty acyl-CoA elongase gene contributes to the production of sex pheromone

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

2:06 PM – 2:18 PM MST

Location: Phoenix Convention Center, 121 C, PCC

Presenting Author(s)

ZW

Zinan Wang (he/him/his)

Assistant professor
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky

Co-Author(s)

YG

Yibo Gu

Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
SM

Shilpi Mohanty

Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
Taylor Hori

Undergraduate Research Assistant
Michigan State University
San Diego, California
CR

Cole Richards

Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
FZ

Fei Zhang

Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan
Henry Chung

Assistant Professor
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan

Cuticular chemicals such as cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) play critical roles in chemical communication and mating in insects. A well-studied example is 7-tricosene (7T) in Drosophila melanogaster males, a major CHC component that enhances female sexual receptivity. However, it is not clear what genetic changes can lead to the evolution of these sex pheromones. In our study, we focus on a fatty acyl-CoA elongase gene, CG31523, and aim to determine how the evolutionary changes in this gene lead to the evolution of several D. melanogaster CHCs including the sex pheromone 7T. Using phylogenetic analysis, we suggest that CG31523 is conserved across insect species with a 1:1 ortholog. Knockdown of Dmel\CG31523 in the oenocytes significantly reduces the production of 7T and several other CHCs. We further overexpressed each of the CG31523 orthologs from four distantly related species (the house fly, the yellow fever mosquito, the Colorado potato beetle, and the fall armyworm), in the oenocytes of the CG31523-knockdown D. melanogaster. The overexpression partly recovered the production of CHCs in D. melanogaster, suggesting that CG31523 across insect species has a conserved function. Interestingly, we showed that in Drosophila species, CG31523 is only expressed in the oenocytes of D. melanogaster and closely related species but not in other Drosophila species, suggesting the oenocyte expression of CG31523 gained in the ancestor of the melanogaster group. Our results present evidence to support the evolutionary scenario that the co-option of a conserved gene contributes to the evolution of insect sex pheromones.