Identification And Experimental Validation Of RNA Editing Sites In Diamondback Moth

RNA editing has been found to be one of the important post-transcriptional regulation mechanisms in recent years. It modifies a single nucleotide in RNA transcript, resulted in the difference between template DNA and mRNA. RNA editing is mediated by Adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs). A-to-G is the most popular among editing types. In this study, we analyzed the RNA editing sites of diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella), an important agricultural pest. The results were as follows:1) Through a large-scale data mining of the diamondback moth genome and transcriptome data, RNA editing sites were identified using a Perl script. After filtering with Binomial and Fisher statistical analysis,8,346 RNA editing sites were found in egg stage, together with 5,882 sites in larva,7,657 sites in pupa and 8,584 sites in adult. Among which,14,895 editing sites are A-to-G type. These results suggest that RNA editing is also an important regulation mechanism in insects.2) We performed RNA editing efficiency analysis, suggesting that 42 sites are differently expressed in four different developmental stages. Among which, nine sites resulted in the change of amino acids. Thirty-one RNA editing sites do not induce the amino acid changes because they locate in the third position of triplet codon. The genes contained the different expressed RNA editing sites include Na+/K+ ion channels, central nervous system developmental associated genes, etc.3) We selected five sites for experimental validation. One of them was successfully confirmed to be high efficiently edited in adult stage. This RNA editing site is located in the Px010134 gene, which has high similarity with Drosophila NCD gene. This gene participates in the mitotic spindle formation.