RNA-seq of Donaciinae guts and symbiotic organs

The Donaciinae use different diets across their life-cycle. As such, the adults feed on leaves of specific host plants and face the challenge of digesting plant cell wall material in order to access the nutritious content. The larvae on the other hand feed on sap, thus lacking many of the essential amino acids and vitamins necessary for larval growth. In some species, the symbiont encodes for a pectinase that can aid the plant cell wall digestion during host adult stages.Additionally, the symbiont encodes for several amino acid and vitamin biosynthesis pathways that can supplement the larval diet. The larval stage is very long, as the total life cycle lasts at least one year (early Summer to early Summer), with the larvae pupating only in the Spring before emerging. Thus, during this stage the symbiont must endure quite different temperatures. To understand whether the symbiont transcriptionally regulates the provided benefits across host life stages and how symbiont gene expression changes with temperature, we sequenced symbiotic organs of Donaciinae adults and larvae during in Summer conditions and larvae in Winter conditions. Additionally, we wanted to confirm the life-stage specificity of the plant cell wall digestion, for which we looked into gene expression in the guts of adults and larvae and screened for host plant cell wall degrading enzymes.