Cyenopyrafen resistance in the two-spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae

Cyenopyrafen is a novel acaricide with a currently unknown mode of action. We selected for high levels of cyenopyrafen resistance in a susceptible spider mite strain and previously published patterns of cross-resistance to other well-described acaricides (Khalighi et al., 2014). In addition, we also included an independent cyenopyrafen-susceptible mite strain (referred to as Akita) in this study. We performed transcriptomic analysis to identify on the molecular level how T. urticae develops resistance to this novel acaricide. Using this dataset, we show that the selection for cyenopyrafen resistance resulted in massive transcriptomic responses in T. urticae. The multi-gene family of cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (CYPs) exhibited a drastic differential expression with a significant transcriptional induction in the acaricide resistant strain. This transcriptomic study highlights the potential importance of CYPs in mite resistance to the cyenopyrafen acaricide. 8 replicates for two comparisons using an Agilent dual color GE microarray design; per replicate 150 mites were pooled. Mites of the cyenopyrafen resistant spider mite (cy5) were directly compared to mites of a susceptible strain (cy3). In a second set of samples, mites of the cyenopyrafen susceptible Akita strain (cy5) and of a reference strain (cy3) were included.