transcriptomic sequencing of pea aphids infected with Acyrthosiphon pisum virus (APV)

Molecular response of aphids to APV infection was explored to understand whether APV helped the aphids survive on a low fitness host plant. After fed with artificial diet containing APV crude preparations from V. villosa colony for 12h, virus-free aphids reared on V. villosa at 8th day using petri dish breeding method were collected for RNA extraction. Control aphids were fed with crude extract from virus-free pea aphid colony. Three biological replicates and every 15 aphids per replicate were prepared. Total aphid RNA of each sample was used to establish a RNA-seq library for transcriptome sequencing using an Illumina Hiseq 4000 sequencer (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA).