ABSTRACT
The domestic silkworms, Bombyx mori, always live in groups and little is known of the outcomes of solitary living. We bred solitary silkworms and performed a comprehensive investigation of the difference between solitary and group-living silkworms. The results show that solitary silkworms had significantly lower weights than group-living counterparts. Moreover, solitary silkworms had faster movements under food luring or heat stress than the group-living ones, supported by extensive behavior experiments. These findings inferred that an increased agility resulted from solitary living. For an understanding of the molecular mechanism associated with solitary living, we performed integrated mRNA and miRNA (microRNA) sequencing of tissues for solitary and group-living silkworms. We identified 165 differently expressed genes (DEGs) and 6 differently expressed miRNAs between the solitary and group-living silkworms. Functional and pathway analyses indicated that these DEGs are associated with weight loss and agility increase. These findings compose a sketch depicting an association between the phenotypes and genes resulted from solitary living and refresh the understanding of solitary living and loneliness, which has an increased prevalence in our modern society.
ABSTRACT
Although the domestic silkworm (Bombyx mori) is an important model and economic animal, there is a lack of comprehensive database for this organism. Here, we developed the silkworm genome informatics database (SGID). It aims to bring together all silkworm-related biological data and provide an interactive platform for gene inquiry and analysis. The function annotation in SGID is thorough and covers 98% of the silkworm genes. The annotation details include function description, Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway, subcellular location, transmembrane topology, protein secondary/tertiary structure, homologous group and transcription factor. SGID provides genome-scale visualization of population genetics test results based on high-depth resequencing data of 158 silkworm samples. It also provides interactive analysis tools of transcriptomic and epigenomic data from 79 NCBI BioProjects. SGID will be extremely useful to silkworm research in the future.
