Yang Liu

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Institute of Plant Protection

Background Alternative food sources are crucial for the survival and reproduction of moths during nectar scarcity. Noctuid moths make a better use of fermented food sources than moths from other families, while the underlying molecular and genetic basis remain unexplored. As the fermentation progresses, yeasts lysis and the accumulation of metaboli...

Insects and their gut bacteria form a tight and beneficial relationship, especially in utilization of host nutrients. The red turpentine beetle (RTB), a destructive and invasive pine pest, employs mutualistic microbes to facilitate its invasion success. However, the molecular mechanism underlying the utilization of nutrients remains unknown. In thi...

Simple Summary Odorant receptors (ORs) are essential to insects’ highly efficient and sensitive olfactory system. ORs’ stage-specific expression and precise functionality significantly influence insect behavior exhibited during particular developmental stages. Despite larvae possessing a relatively simplistic olfactory system with fewer expressed O...

Olfaction is critical for guiding the physiological activities of insects, with antennae being the primary olfactory organs. However, recent evidence suggests that other tissues may also participate in olfactory recognition. Among these, the genitalia of moths have received attention due to their roles in mating and oviposition. Sensilla and odoran...

Sex pheromones play crucial role in mating behavior of moths, involving intricate recognition mechanisms. While insect chemical biology has extensively studied type I pheromones, type II pheromones remain largely unexplored. This study focused on Helicoverpa armigera, a representative species of noctuid moth, aiming to reassess its sex pheromone co...

Background Ecosystems are brimming with myriad compounds, including some at very low concentrations that are indispensable for insect survival and reproduction. Screening strategies for identifying active compounds are typically based on bioassay-guided approaches. Results Here, we selected two candidate odorant receptors from a major pest of cruc...

Finding ideal oviposition sites is a task of vital importance for all female insects. To ensure optimal conditions for their progeny, females of herbivorous insects detect not only odors of a relevant host plant but also chemicals released by eggs, named oviposition-deterring pheromones (ODPs). It is reported that such chemicals play critical roles...

In moths, pheromone receptors (PRs) are crucial for intraspecific sexual communication between males and females. Moth PRs are considered as an ideal model for studying the evolution of insect PRs, and a large number of PRs have been identified and functionally characterized in different moth species. Moth PRs were initially thought to fall into a...

Insects rely on olfaction to guide a wide range of adaptive behaviors, including mate and food localization, mate choice, oviposition site selection, kin recognition, and predator avoidance.1 In nocturnal insects, such as moths2 and cockroaches,3 mate finding is stimulated predominantly by long-range species-specific sex pheromones, typically emitt...

Male moths utilize their pheromone communication systems to distinguish potential mates from other sympatric species, which contributes to maintaining reproductive isolation and even drives speciation. The molecular mechanisms underlying the evolution of pheromone communication systems are usually studied between closely-related moth species for th...

Pheromone receptors (PRs) are key proteins in the molecular mechanism of pheromone recognition, and exploring the functional differentiation of PRs between closely related species helps to understand the evolution of moth mating systems. Pheromone components of the agricultural pest Mythimna loreyi have turned into (Z)-9-tetradecen-1-yl acetate (Z9...

The spotted alfalfa aphid (SAA, Therioaphis trifolii) (Hemiptera: Aphididae) is a destructive pest of cultivated alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) that leads to large financial losses in the livestock industry around the world. Here, we present a chromosome-scale genome assembly of T. trifolii, the first genome assembly for the aphid subfamily Calaphidi...

Pheromone communication is an essential component of reproductive isolation in animals. As such, evolution of pheromone signaling can be linked to speciation. For example, the evolution of sex pheromones is thought to have played a major role in the diversification of moths. In the crop pests Spodoptera littoralis and S. litura, the major component...

Mythimna separata and Mythimna loreyi are global pests of gramineous cereals, heavily controlled with synthetic insecticides. Here, we generated two high-quality chromosome-level genome assemblies for M. separata (688 Mb) and M. loreyi (683 Mb). Our analysis identified Z and W chromosomes, with few genes and abundant transposable elements (TEs) fou...

BACKGROUND Elevated temperature can directly affect the insect pest population dynamics. Many experimental studies have indicated that high temperatures affect the biological and ecological characteristics of the widely distributed crop pest Aphis gossypii, but the molecular mechanisms underlying its response to heat stress remain unstudied. Here,...

Simple Summary One of the fundamental aims of neuroscience is to understand how the brain coordinates motor behaviors. Insects are perfect models for such studies because they have a simple but elaborate brain and a complex but stereotypical behavioral reservoir. The descending neurons (DNs) of insects connect the brain and thoracic ganglia and pla...

Odorant receptor (OR) is crucial for insects to detect and recognize external chemical cues closely related to their survival. The insect OR forms a heteromeric complex composed of a ligand-specific receptor and a ubiquitously odorant receptor coreceptor (Orco). This study used the CRISPR/Cas9 technique to knock out (KO) Orco and reveal its essenti...

Moths possess an extremely sensitive and diverse sex pheromone processing system, in which pheromone receptors (PRs) are essential to ensure communication between mating partners. Functional properties of some PRs are conserved among species, which is important for reproduction. However, functional differentiation has occurred in some homologous PR...

Insects can use plant volatiles to guide certain behaviors, such as courtship, mating, host positioning, and habitat selection. Plutella xylostella is a global agricultural pest and has always been closely studied, but relatively few studies assess the molecular mechanism of P. xylostella exposed to plant volatiles. In this study, we analyzed the r...

Two-electrode voltage clamp (TEVC) combined with the Xenopus laevis oocytes heterologous expression system is a powerful electrophysiological tool widely used to study the properties of many transmembrane proteins. Here, we describe a protocol using this combined approach to identify the ligands of odorant receptors that form ligand-gated ion chann...

The mechanism of sex pheromone reception in the male cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera has been extensively studied because it has become an important model system for understanding insect olfaction. However, the pathways of pheromone processing from the antenna to the primary olfactory center in H. armigera have not yet been clarified. Here, th...

Simple Summary Odorant receptors (ORs) are at the core of the high-efficiency and sensitive olfactory system in insects. The expression and specific function of ORs largely contribute to the habits and speciation of one species. Although being predominantly expressed in the antennae, ORs in non-olfactory organs are suggested to have particular role...

A highly sensitive olfactory system is required for various insect behaviors, including oviposition site selection, host location, and mate recognition. Odorant receptors (ORs) play a critical role in odorant detection. In this study, we cloned four OR genes referred to as AlucORs (AlucOR4, AlucOR39, AlucOR43, and AlucOR47) from the green mirid bug...

Many plants can successfully join root and shoot sections at cut surfaces when severed at the stem. Graft healing is complex and conserved in diverse taxonomic groups with different vascular structures. Herein, we compared transcriptome data from autografted and separated stem sections of Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) to ex...

The bark beetle, Scolytus schevyrewi (S. schevyrewi), is an economically important pest in China that causes serious damage to the fruit industry, particularly, in Xinjiang Province. Chemical signals play an important role in the behavior of most insects, accordingly, ecofriendly traps can be used to monitor and control the target pests in agricult...

The sense of taste plays a crucial role in herbivorous insects by discriminating nutrients from complex plant metabolic compounds. The peripheral coding of taste has been thoroughly studied in many insect species, but the central gustatory pathways are poorly described. In the present study, we characterized single neurons in the gnathal ganglion o...

The sex pheromone processing system of moths has been a major focus of research on olfaction and speciation, as it is highly specific and closely related to reproductive isolation. The two noctuid moths Heliothis virescens and Heliothis subflexa have been used as a model for deciphering the mechanisms underlying differentiation in pheromone communi...

Mirid bugs are a group of important insect pests that cause large annual losses in agricultural production. Many studies have focused on the isolation and identification of sex pheromones in mirid bugs, and the components and biological activity of the sex pheromones have also been studied as a way to control these pests. However, few studies have...

Aquaporin (AQP) transport solutes across cell membranes in both unicellular and multicellular organisms. In this study, the aquaporin CsPrip was identified in Chilo suppressalis, an important pest of rice. CsPrip was comprised of two variants, CsPrip_v1 and CsPrip_v2; the former variant was <103 bp was shorter than the latter, although both exhibit...

BACKGROUND In Drosophila, the sex peptide receptor (SPR) in females to detect male sex peptide (SP) and trigger changes in female behavior including mating rejection and oviposition. In moths, the SPR had been identified and investigated the limited function by using RNA interference (RNAi). However, the detailed function of SPR after a normal mati...

The sensory neuron membrane protein, SNMP1, was initially discovered in moths and is associated with sex pheromone sensitive neurons, suggesting a role in the detection of these semiochemicals. Although DrosophilaSNMP1 has been reported to be involved in detecting of the sex pheromone cis-vaccenyl acetate (cVA), the role of this protein in moths in...

Odorant receptors (ORs) are essential for plant-insect interactions. However, despite the global impacts of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) as major herbivores and pollinators, little functional data is available about Lepidoptera ORs involved in plant volatile detection. Here, we initially characterized the plant-volatile-sensing function(s) o...

Odorant receptors (ORs) are essential for plant-insect interactions. However, despite the global impacts of Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) as major herbivores and pollinators, little functional data is available about Lepidoptera ORs involved in plant volatile detection. Here, we initially characterized the plant-volatile-sensing function(s) o...

Many insects possess the ability to detect fine fluctuations in the environmental CO2 concentration. In herbivorous species, plant-emitted CO2, in combination with other sensory cues, affect many behaviors including foraging and oviposition. In contrast to the comprehensive knowledge obtained on the insect olfactory pathway in recent years, we stil...

Apolygus lucorum (Miridae) is an omnivorous pest that occurs world-wide and is notorious for its serious damage to various crops and substantial economic losses. Although some studies have examined the biological characteristics of this mirid bugs, no reference genome is available in Miridae, limiting in-depth studies of this pest. Here, we present...

The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is a serious agricultural and urban pest that has become an invasive species in many parts of the world. Olfaction plays an indispensable role in regulating insect behaviors, such as host plant location, partners searching, and avoidance of predators. In this study, we seq...

The Lepidoptera is the second largest insect order, which has the most extensive knowledge of sex pheromones and mechanisms of pheromone communication since the identification of the first insect pheromone in Bombyx mori. In the past 15 years, pheromone receptors have been identified and functionally characterized in many moth species. HarmOR14 is...

Insect sensing of odorants plays important roles in various behaviors, including host location, mate attraction, and oviposition site selection. The odorant receptor (OR) is a key protein in insect environmental odor recognition. Most Diptera studies of ORs have focused on Drosophila and mosquitos, so there little known about ORs in the agricultura...

Insect olfactory sensing is crucial for finding food, mating, and oviposition preference. Odorant receptors (ORs) play a central role in the transmission of odorant signals into the environment by the peripheral olfactory system. Therefore, the identification and functional study of ORs are essential to better understand olfactory mechanisms in ins...

Cotesia vestalis (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) is an endoparasitoid wasp that attacks larvae of the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (Linnaeus), one of the most important pests of cruciferous plants in the world. This natural enemy has been used to control populations of P. xylostella. To more fully understand the molecular mechanisms of olfactory...

Aquaporins (AQPs), which are members of the major intrinsic protein (MIP) family, play an important role in the transport of water and other small, uncharged solutes across membranes. In this study, we identified gene encoding two aquaporin 12-like (AQP12L) proteins, CsAqp12L_v1 and CsAqp12L_v2, from Chilo suppressalis, a serious rice pest in Asia....

Three closely related species, Helicoverpa armigera, H. assulta, and Heliothis virescens from Lepidoptera Noctuidae, are used as a model system for exploring sexual communication and species isolation. Pheromone receptors (PRs) previously discovered in model moth species include seven in H. armigera, six in H. assulta, and six in H. virescens. PRs...

SSR traces from OR16-expressing neurons in at1 sensilla of Drosophila in response to pheromone compounds.

SSR traces from OR6-expressing neurons in at1 sensilla of Drosophila in response to pheromone compounds.

SSR traces from OR13-expressing neurons in at1 sensilla of Drosophila in response to pheromone compounds.

Functional characterizations of PR genes in some Lepidopteran species.

Functional characterizations of PRs in three Heliothis/Helicoverpa species in vitro.

Alignments of amino acid sequences of OBPs and CSPs identified in the proboscis and labial palps of H. armigera. (A) Conserved cysteines of HarmOBPs were shown by C1–C6. Eight novel OBPs were marked by orange circles. (B) Conserved cysteines of HarmCSPs were shown by C1–C4. Six novel CSPs were marked by orange circles.

Unigenes of eight novel odorant binding proteins (OBPs) and six novel chemosensory proteins (CSPs) identified in the proboscis and labial palp.

Sequence analysis of candidate chemosensory genes (4 ORs, 6 IRs, 7 GRs, 39 OBPs, 26 CSPs, 2 SNMPs) identified in the proboscis and labial palps of H. armigera.

Siphoning mouthparts, consisting of proboscis and labial palps, are the exclusive feeding organs and important chemosensory organs in most adult Lepidoptera. In this study, the general morphology of the mouthpart organs and precision architecture of the proboscis was described in adult Helicoverpa armigera. Three major sensilla types with nine subt...

Background The oriental armyworm, Mythimna separata, is an economically important and common Lepidopteran pest of cereal crops. Chemoreception plays a key role in insect life, such as foraging, oviposition site selection, and mating partners. To better understand the chemosensory mechanisms in M. separata, transcriptomic analysis of antennae, labia...

Aquaporins are integral membrane proteins some of which form high capacity water-selective channels, promoting water permeation across cell membranes. In this study, we isolated the aquaporin transcript (CsDrip1) of Chilo suppressalis, one of the important rice pests. CsDrip1 included two variants, CsDrip1_v1 and CsDrip1_v2. Although CsDrip1_v2 seq...

The highly specialized olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) on the antennae of male moths can recognize blends of several pheromone components. In previous studies, a total of six candidate pheromone receptor (PR) genes were cloned and functionally characterized in the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella. In the present work, we report on three nove...

Niemann-Pick proteins type C2 (NPC2) are carriers of cholesterol in vertebrates, with a single member in each species. The high sequence conservation between mammals and across vertebrates is related to their common function. In contrast, NPC2 proteins in arthropods have undergone extensive duplication and differentiation, probably under environmen...

Perception of environmental and habitat cues is of significance for insect survival and reproduction. Odor detection in insects is mediated by a number of proteins in antennae such as odorant receptors (ORs), ionotropic receptors (IRs), odorant binding proteins (OBPs), chemosensory proteins (CSPs), sensory neuron membrane proteins (SNMPs) and odora...

Background Predatory syrphid larvae are an important natural enemy of aphids in cotton agro-ecosystems in China. Their behaviors in prey foraging, localization and oviposition greatly rely on the perception of chemical cues. As a first step to better understand syrphid olfaction at the molecular level, we have performed a systematic identification...

The sensitive olfactory system is necessary for survival of insects. Odorant receptors (ORs) are located on the dendrites of olfactory receptor neurons and play a critical role in odor detection. Insect ORs are functionally analyzed via heterologous expression in a Xenopus oocyte system using a two-electrode voltage-clamp (TEVC) electrophysiologica...

In order to acquire enough nutrients and energy for further development, larvae need to invest a large portion of their sensory equipments to identify food sources. Yet, the molecular basis of odor-driven behavior in larvae has been poorly investigated. Information on olfactory genes, particularly odorant binding proteins (OBPs) and chemosensory pr...

Accession numbers for amino acid sequences of OBPs and CSPs used in phylogenetic analyses. (DOCX)

Species distribution of unigenes’ best-hit annotation term in nr database. (A) H. armigera unigenes. (B) H. assulta unigenes. (TIF)

Primers for RT-PCR expression analyses of H. armigera OBPs and CSPs. (DOCX)

Graphical Abstract Highlights d The antagonist Z11-16:OH emitted by females regulates optimal mating time d OR16 is required for Z11-16:OH-evoked electrophysiological and behavior responses d Mating with mature female benefits reproduction outputs Correspondence wangguirong@caas.cn In Brief Chang et al. provide evidence that OR16 receptor is requir...

Graphical Abstract Highlights d The antagonist Z11-16:OH emitted by females regulates optimal mating time d OR16 is required for Z11-16:OH-evoked electrophysiological and behavior responses d Mating with mature female benefits reproduction outputs Correspondence wangguirong@caas.cn In Brief Chang et al. provide evidence that OR16 receptor is requir...

Background The cereal weevil, Sitophilus zeamais is one of the most destructive pests of stored cereals worldwide. Frequent use of fumigants for managing stored-product insects has led to the development of resistance in insects. Essential oils from aromatic plants including the tea oil plant, Melaleuca alternifolia may provide environmentally frie...

Differentially expressed genes encoding xenobiotic detoxification-related enzymes. (XLSX)

qRT-PCR primers and primer efficiency. (XLSX)

Differentially expressed genes with GO annotations. (XLSX)

Differentially expressed genes encoding respiration-related enzymes. (XLSX)

Differentially expressed genes by RNA-Seq. (XLSX)

Differentially expressed genes with KEGG annotations. (XLSX)

The sesquiterpene (E)-β-farnesene (EBF) is the alarm pheromone for many species of aphids [1]. When released from aphids attacked by parasitoids or predators, it alerts nearby conspecifics to escape by walking away and dropping off the host plant [2, 3]. The reception of alarm pheromone in aphids is accomplished through a highly sensitive chemosens...

Odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) and chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are endowed with several different functions besides being carriers for pheromones and odorants. Based on a previous report of a CSP acting as surfactant in the proboscis of the moth Helicoverpa armigera, we revealed the presence of orthologue proteins in two other moths Plutella xylo...