Preparing for winter : the transcriptomic response associated with different day lengths in Drosophila montana
Abstract
At northern latitudes, the most robust cue for assessing the onset of winter is the shortening of day lengths. Many species use day length as a cue to increase their cold tolerance and/or enter into diapause, but little is known about changes in gene expression that occur under different day lengths. We investigate the gene expression changes associated with differences in light/dark cycles in Drosophila montana, a northerly distributed species with a strong adult photoperiodic reproductive diapause. To examine gene expression changes induced by light both prior to and during diapause, we used both nondiapausing and diapausing flies. We found that the majority of genes that are differentially expressed between different day lengths in nondiapausing and diapausing flies differ. However, the biological processes involved were broadly similar. These included neuron development and metabolism, which are largely consistent with an increase in cold tolerance previously observed to occur in these flies. We also found that many genes associated with reproduction change in expression level between different day lengths, suggesting that D. montana use changes in day length to cue changes in reproduction both before and after entering into diapause. Finally, we also identified several interesting candidate genes for light-induced changes including Lsp2, para, and Ih.
Citation
Parker , D J , Ritchie , M G & Kankare , M 2016 , ' Preparing for winter : the transcriptomic response associated with different day lengths in Drosophila montana ' , G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics , vol. 6 , no. 5 , pp. 1373-1381 . https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.116.027870
Publication
G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2160-1836Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016 Parker et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
The work has been supported by a Natural Environment Research Council studentship to D.J.P. and an Academy of Finland grant to M.K. (project 268214).Collections
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