The white gene in Nilaparvata lugens and its expression pattern under two different survival stresses

Abstract The brown planthopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens (Stal), is a serious pest of rice. Chemical control and pest-resistant rice breeding are always two major management strategies of BPH. In order to keep effective control, understanding the detoxification mechanism of this insect pest appears to be high important. In addition to be an eye pigment transporter, White protein is also important for its non-eye roles, such as a potential target for insecticides and Bt toxin. In this study, we characterized the full-length white orthologues gene in N. lugens ( Nlwhite ). NlWhite, the deduced protein of Nlwhite , has feature motifs of the eye pigment transporter. Knocking down Nlwhite transcript, the compound eye color partially changed to white. Nlwhite can be detected in all developmental stages and body parts, indicating that it is not a developmental or tissue-specific expression gene. The expression levels of Nlwhite were all significantly upregulated in both pymetrozine-selection and Mudgo-selection BPH strains, which were selected for several generations. These results indicated that NlWhite participated in the detoxification not only for the exogenous insecticides but also for the endogenous toxic substance.