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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Invasive Insect Biocontrol & Behavior Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #419258
Research Project: Sustainable Insect Pest Management for Urban Agriculture and Landscapes

Location: Invasive Insect Biocontrol & Behavior Laboratory

Title: A replicated, whole-insect transcriptomic dataset for Nezara viridula (southern green stink bug) spanning developmental stadia and sexes

Author
item Sparks, Michael
item KUHAR, DANIEL - US Department Of Agriculture (USDA)
item Weber, Donald
item Gundersen-Rindal, Dawn

Submitted to: Data in Brief
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/28/2024
Publication Date: 11/4/2024
Citation: Sparks, M., Kuhar, D., Weber, D.C., Gundersen, D.E. 2024. A replicated, whole-insect transcriptomic dataset for Nezara viridula (southern green stink bug) spanning developmental stadia and sexes. Data in Brief. Volume 57, December 2024, 111106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.111106.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.111106

Interpretive Summary: The southern green stink bug, Nezara viridula (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is a serious agricultural pest insect causing economic damage in the western hemisphere. Sequencing its transcriptome was motivated by a desire to expand upon the developmental stadia and tissue types that were already represented in the literature and public sequence databases. At present, no transcriptomic data is available characterizing juvenile life stages, which is a critical deficiency in that nymphal stadia are ideal points to disrupt the insect’s life cycle as a means for effective population control. Identifying genes differentially expressed in juveniles relative to adults also affords compelling targets for downstream functional gene characterization experiments, to better understand basic insect biology. Certain other currently available N. viridula transcriptomic datasets only characterize the host at the midgut level, and thus may potentially overlook important transcripts specifically expressed in other tissue types. The data and quantitative analyses described in this work address and redress these deficiencies in the literature. What is more, the sequence resources can potentially be used to improve gene finding work in the (unrelated and ongoing) southern green stink bug genome sequencing project.

Technical Abstract: The southern green stink bug, Nezara viridula (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is a serious agricultural pest insect causing economic damage in the western hemisphere. Although transcriptome resources exist for adults of this species at both midgut-only and whole-insect levels, data for juvenile developmental stadia are not currently available. Sequence data reported in this study close this gap, providing a substantial increase of extrinsic evidence for use in improving gene annotations in the southern green stink bug genome project, for example. Analysis of these data identify 21,380 putative transcripts associated with differentially expressed genes, providing a list of potential targets for downstream experimental characterization of gene function.