Heliothine immunogenomics

Resistance of Heliothine pests to microbial entomopathogens and to parasitoids is one barrier to effective control by biological control agents. In order to better understand the immune response of budworms and bollworms against microbial entomopathogens several orthologs of antibacterial response proteins were identified and extracted from a budworm EST database for detailed study of functional genomics. Induction of these selected antibacterial protein transcripts by fungal, bacterial and baculoviral infection was quantitated using qPCR. Transcript levels of immediate innate defense such as heliomicin, virescein, viresin, gloverin, lebocin, gloverin, ABP-2, cecropins, attacins and others were rapidly elevated by bacterial elicitation, usually as early as three hours post-treatment. In contrast, the transcript levels of other immune responders such as scolexin-B, growth-blocking peptide binding protein, C-type lectin and serpin were more slowly induced by bacterial elicitation.