Identification of transcripts involved in digestion, detoxification and immune response from transcriptome of Empoasca vitis (Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) nymphs

Tea production has been significantly impacted by the false-eye leafhopper, Empoasca vitis (Göthe), around Asia. To identify the key genes which are responsible for nutrition absorption, xenobiotic metabolism and immune response, the transcriptome of either alimentary tracts or bodies minus alimentary tract of E. vitis was sequenced and analyzed. Over 31 million reads were obtained from Illumina sequencing. De novo sequence assembly resulted in 52,182 unigenes with a mean size of 848 nt. The assembled unigenes were then annotated using various databases. Transcripts of at least 566 digestion-, 224 detoxification-, and 288 immune-related putative genes in E. vitis were identified. In addition, relative expression of highly abundant transcripts was verified through quantitative real-time PCR. Results from this investigation provide genomic information about E. vitis, which will be helpful in further study of E. vitis biology and in the development of novel strategies to control this devastating pest.