High-throughput genotyping of a full voltage-gated sodium channel gene via genomic DNA using target capture sequencing and analytical pipeline MoNaS to discover novel insecticide resistance mutations

PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2019 Nov 18;13(11):e0007818. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0007818. eCollection 2019 Nov.

Abstract

In insects, the voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) is the primary target site of pyrethroid insecticides. Various amino acid substitutions in the VGSC protein, which are selected under insecticide pressure, are known to confer insecticide resistance. In the genome, the VGSC gene consists of more than 30 exons sparsely distributed across a large genomic region, which often exceeds 100 kbp. Due to this complex genomic structure, it is often challenging to genotype full coding nucleotide sequences (CDSs) of VGSC from individual genomic DNA (gDNA). In this study, we designed biotinylated oligonucleotide probes from CDSs of VGSC of Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus. The probe set effectively concentrated (>80,000-fold) all targeted regions of gene VGSC from pooled barcoded Illumina libraries each constructed from individual A. albopictus gDNAs. The probe set also captured all orthologous VGSC CDSs, except some tiny exons, from the gDNA of other Culicinae mosquitos, A. aegypti and Culex pipiens complex, with comparable efficiency as a result of the high nucleotide-level conservation of VGSC. To improve efficiency of the downstream bioinformatic process, we developed an automated pipeline-MoNaS (Mosquito Na+ channel mutation Search)-which calls amino acid substitutions in the VGSC from NGS reads and compares those to known resistance mutations. The proposed method and our bioinformatic tool should facilitate the discovery of novel amino acid variants conferring insecticide resistance on VGSC and population genetic studies on resistance alleles (with respect to the origin, selection, and migration etc.) in both clinically and agriculturally important insect pests.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aedes / genetics*
  • Alleles
  • Animals
  • Culex / genetics
  • DNA / metabolism
  • Exons
  • Genomics*
  • Genotype*
  • Insecticide Resistance / genetics*
  • Mutation*
  • Pyrethrins / pharmacology
  • Sodium / metabolism
  • Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels / genetics*

Substances

  • Pyrethrins
  • Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels
  • DNA
  • Sodium

Grants and funding

The study was supported by the Research Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases (JP19fk0108067) given to SK from Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) and by Japan Initiative for Global Research Network on Infectious Diseases (J-GRID) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and AMED (https://www.amed.go.jp/en/index.html). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.