【Aim】 Chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are soluble carrier proteins that may play multiple roles in insects. The objective of this study is to assembly the antennal transcriptomes of Oedaleus asiaticus, one of the most important grasshopper pests in northern China, to identify the chemosensory protein genes, and to analyze their tissue expression profiles. 【Methods】 The antennal transcriptomes of the O. asiaticus adults were sequenced and assembled by RNA-Seq. The CSP genes were identified by screening the transcriptome data, and their expression levels in  different adult tissues (antenna, head without antennae and mouthparts, labrum, labium without labial palps, labial palp, maxillary palp, thorax, tarsus, wing, and abdomen) were analyzed by qPCR. 【Results】 The antennal transcriptomes of the O. asiaticus adults were successfully assembled. A total of 61 629 unigenes with a mean length of 733 nt were obtained, and the total length and N50 were 45 175 449 nt and 1 130 nt, respectively. Among them, 26 064 unigenes (42.29%) were annotated to six databases (NR, NT, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG and GO). A total of 17 putative CSP genes were identified by blasting, cDNA cloning and sequencing. BlastP best hit results and phylogenetic analysis both showed that the putative OasiCSPs were most closely related to LmigCSPs from Locusta migratoria and SgreCSPs from Schistocerca gregaria. qPCR analysis howed that there were significant differences in the expression levels of eight different SP genes in different adult tissues. Especially, OasiCSP8 was much highly expressed in the abial palps and maxillary palps, and OasiCSP11 and OasiCSP13 had the highest expression evels in the antenna. OasiCSP15 had much higher expression levels in chemosensory tissues antenna, labrum, labium without labial palps, labial palp, maxillary palp, and tarsus) han in non-chemosensory tissues (head without antenna and mouthpart, thorax, wing, and abdomen). However, OasiCSP12 had similar expression distribution in nearly all the tested tissues.【Conclusion】 The results suggest that OasiCSPs might play multiple roles in the hemosensory process and development of O. asiaticus. Our findings provide a foundation for the further functional studies of these CSPs in O. asiaticus.

【Aim】 To sequence and analyze the complete mitochondrial genome (mtgenome) of Anopheles lindesayi, and to construct and discuss the molecular phylogenetic relationships of the genus Anopheles based on the known mtgenomes. 【Methods】 The complete mtgenome of An. lindesayi was sequenced and annotated, and its general features and base composition were analyzed. The phylogenetic relationships between An. lindesayi and other 32 species in the genus Anopheles were reconstructed using maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods based on the concatenated nucleotide sequences and amino acid sequences of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), and the systematics of the genus Anopheles was discussed based on the phylogenetic analysis. 【Results】 The complete mtgenome sequence of An. lindesayi is 15 366 bp in length, which contains 13 PCGs, 22 tRNA genes, two rRNA genes, and one control region. The mtgenome has a clear bias in nucleotide composition with a positive AT-skew and a negative GC-skew. The initiation codons of PCGs comply with the ATN rule except that COX1 uses TCG and ND5 uses GTG as the start codon, and the termination codon is TAA or incomplete T. The tRNAs have the typical clover-leaf structure, but  tRNA^Ser(AGN) has a large loop instead of the conserved stem-and-loop structure. The control region has the highest AT content 94.54%). The sliding window analysis suggested that the PCGs are the most suitable markers to elucidate the phylogenetic relationships at the subgenus and genus levels. The phylogenetic analysis strongly supported each of the subgenera Cellia, Anopheles, Nyssorhynchus and Kerteszia to be a monophyletic group. An. lindesayi and An. atroparvus+An. quadrimaculatus A, the latter two traditionally classified as Anopheles Series, are separated by An. sinensis in Myzorhynchus Series on all the four phylogenetic trees, raising a new debate on the taxonomy of the two Series. 【Conclusion】This study obtained the complete mtgenome sequence of An. lindesayi and explored the mtgenome characteristics and phylogeny of the genus Anopheles, establishing the information frame for further studying the mtgenomes and phylogeny of the family Culicidae.

In the process of co-evolution between plants and phytophagous insects, plants are selected to optimize their defenses, whereas phytophagous insects are selected to develop diverse traits to adapt to plant defenses in turn. The adaption to plant defenses in phytophagous insects exhibits diversity. Insects can exploit the effectors from their oral secretions to inhibit or impair plant defenses, activate some proteins that are specifically expressed in their guts to inhibit the production of defensive metabolites or directly degrade defensive metabolites, and employ microbes that they harbored to indirectly suppress plant defenses. In addition, insects also can adapt to plant defenses with other behavioral or physiological traits, including oviposition, insect-induced plant volatiles, and recognition of defensive metabolites. In this article, we reviewed the research progress on how insects exploit diverse effectors that they harbored to adapt to plant defenses.

【Aim】 To explore the molecular mechanism of Myzus persicae to adapt to UV-B stress.【Methods】 The full-length cDNA of the heat shock protein gene Hsp70 was cloned from M. persicae by using RT-PCR and RACE techniques, and its sequence characteristics were analyzed by bioinformatics methods. The relative expression levels of this gene in M. persicae adults exposed to UV-B stress for different time (0, 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 min) were detected by qPCR. 【Results】 The cDNA of a Hsp70 gene was cloned from M. persicae and named as MpHsp70 (GenBank accession no.: MF509827). The full length of the gene is 2 221 bp and the open reading frame (ORF) is 1 965 bp, encoding 654 amino acids. The relative molecular weight of its encoded protein is 71.41 kD, and the isoelectric point (pI) is 5.34. The highly conserved sequence EEVD shows that this protein belongs to the cytoplasmic heat shock protein (Hsp). The phylogenetic relationship analysis showed that MpHsp70 is highly homologous to Hsp70s of various insects and shows the high conservation characteristic of Hsp70 gene. The qPCR results showed that the relative expression level of MpHsp70 in M. persicae adults increased first, achieved the highest at 30 min post exposure, and then decreased with the prolonged UV-B irradiation time. 【Conclusion】MpHsp70 gene in M. persicae can respond to UV-B stress and may play an important role in the adaptation of M. persicae to UV-B stress.