A genomic-era viewpoint of lepidopteran physiology: applications of LepDB.org for pathway analyses

The Order Lepidoptera contains several major pests of food, fiber, and biofuel crops. We have implemented an on-line framework for comparative genomics of crop pest species that employs annotated contig assemblies of homologous EST and genomic sequences from Ostrinia nubilalis, Heliothis virescens and Helicoverpa zea, “LepDB” (lepdb.org), with more species being added. LepDB is a collaborative effort between USDA, butterflybase.org, and vectorbase.org. This web portal provides putative and validated genetic marker information for use in population, molecular, and quantitative genetic applications of lepidopteran pest species. Gene orthologies for all contigs is accomplished by via BLAST, InterPro, and gene ontology (GO) databases information, and are reference to the B. mori UniGene set. In the present analyses, we used comparative KEGG metabolic mapping information within LepDB to demonstrate the application of these data to regulatory and biochemical pathway analyses which enables hypothesis-driven metabolomic experimentation. This resource provides a framework for comparative analyses in Lepidoptera, and the community of lepidopteran researchers is invited to become active participants in the LepDB mission.