Cotton plants produce gossypol as a major secondary metabolite to resist insect herbivores and pathogens. Helicoverpa armigera may employ multigene families of detoxification enzymes to deal with this metabolite. So far, the strength of the transcriptional response to gossypol detoxification in the cotton bollworms remains poorly understood. Here, we investigated the genomewide transcriptional changes that occur in cotton bollworm larvae after one generation feeding on various host plants (cotton, corn, soybean and chili) or an artificial diet. Six genes potentially involved in detoxification of xenobiotics were highly upregulated in bollworms fed on cotton, and the expression of five of these differed significantly in insects that fed on gossypol diet compared with the artificial diet. When these six genes were downregulated using RNA interference, downregulation only of CYP4L11, CYP6AB9 and CCE001b led to reduced growth of bollworm larvae feeding on gossypol diets. These data suggest that the three genes are involved in response of H. armigera to gossypol of cotton. Our results proved that H. armigera may have a broad mechanism for gossypol detoxification.

中文翻译：

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棉铃虫解毒酶对不同寄主植物的适应性调节。

棉株产生的棉酚是抵抗昆虫食草动物和病原体的主要次要代谢产物。棉铃虫可能会使用解毒酶的多基因家族来处理这种代谢产物。迄今为止，棉铃虫对棉酚解毒的转录反应强度仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们调查了一代棉铃虫幼虫以各种宿主植物（棉花，玉米，大豆和辣椒）或人工饮食为食后发生的全基因组转录变化。在棉铃虫喂养的棉铃虫中，有六个可能与异物解毒有关的基因高度上调，与人工饮食相比，棉酚饮食的昆虫中其中五个的表达差异显着。当使用RNA干扰将这六个基因下调时，仅CYP4L11，CYP6AB9和CCE001b导致以棉酚为食的棉铃虫幼虫生长减少。这些数据表明，这三个基因参与棉铃虫对棉酚的反应。我们的结果证明棉铃虫可能具有棉酚解毒的广泛机制。