Locusta migratoria Raw sequence reads. Locusta migratoria

Locust massive infestations caused by large scale swarms bring catastrophic disasters, resulting from the phase transition from solitary to gregarious locusts. Although previous studies revealed molecular mechanisms underlying the phenotypic plasticity of locusts at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, the molecular mechanisms underlying the translational regulation of the locust phase transition are unclear. We systematically monitored the protein translation at the phase transitional stage in locusts and identified the molecular phenotypic plasticity of ribosome profiles between the solitary and gregarious locusts. In the most focused WGCNA and PPI cluster, five genes have the resemble amount protein products to TE change. Moreover, the high translational efficiency of RPL7 mediated pale mRNA loading onto ribosome enhancing locust behavioral aggregation, because pale is crucial gene in the dopamine pathway regulating the locust phase transition. Thus, our results uncover an insight underlying phenotypic plasticity of locusts at translational level providing potential targets for future pesticide development.