A Research Paper on Whitefly Transcriptome and Gene Expression Published in BMC Genomics

July 22, 2010

A research paper on whitefly transcriptome and gene expression analysis has been published in BMC Genomics. The paper was entitled "De novo characterization of a whitefly transcriptome and analysis of its gene expression during development", written by Dr. Wang Xiaowei, Professor Liu Shusheng and some other faculty members from Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Crop Pathogens and Insects, Zhejiang University.

The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is one of world s major agricultural pests arousing wide concern. Leading international journals such as Nature and Science have reported its serious harm on many occasions and entitled it as a super pest. Foreign Bemisia tabaci started its invasion in China in 1990s, and in the past decade, extensive whitefly damage has been reported in more than 10 provinces.

Due to the great damage caused by whitefly, the study of its genetic information has been a hot topic since 2000. However, whitefly Bemisia tabaci has very complex genetic structures with more than 20 cryptic species, some of which have been referred to as biotypes. Genomic sequence resources available for the whitefly are scarce. These factors restrict the development of research on its invasion and relevant mechanisms. The research team for the first time de novo transcriptome assembly of Q biotype whitefly, and obtained a sequencing depth of over 2.5 million tags based on which transcriptome changes can be coded. In addition, this is the first research on transcriptome assembly and gene expression analysis in a species lacking genome information with the use of short read sequencing technology (Illumina), providing models for the study of transcriptome in other non-model organisms.

The paper has been rated as Highly Accessed since its publication. For more information, please visit: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/11/400.