Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 (HNF4) plays essential roles in regulating lipid metabolism and glucose homeostasis in female insects. However, little is known about the role of HNF4 in insect fecundity. Here we demonstrate that HNF4 regulates female fecundity by affecting egg hatching in the brown planthopper (BPH) Nilaparvata lugens. HNF4 was highly expressed in the ovary and fat body of female adult. RNA interference-mediated HNF4 knockdown resulted in a dramatic reduction in egg hatchability and caused a severe block in embryonic development, while showed no significant effects on ovary development and egg laying. Transcriptome sequencing analysis showed that 72 genes encoding ribosome proteins were significantly down-regulated in the HNF4-silenced BPH and “ribosome” was the most-enriched pathway for the down-regulated genes. These results suggest that HNF4 controls the dynamics of egg structure, likely through its regulation of ribosome protein genes, which in turn affects the embryonic development and egg hatching.

肝细胞核因子 4 (HNF4) 在调节雌性昆虫的脂质代谢和葡萄糖稳态中起重要作用。然而，人们对 HNF4 在昆虫繁殖力中的作用知之甚少。在这里，我们证明 HNF4 通过影响褐飞虱 (BPH) Nilaparvata lugens 的卵孵化来调节雌性繁殖力。HNF4在成年女性的卵巢和脂肪体中高表达。RNA 干扰介导的HNF4敲低导致卵孵化率显着降低，严重阻碍胚胎发育，但对卵巢发育和产卵没有显着影响。转录组测序分析显示，编码核糖体蛋白的 72 个基因在HNF4中显着下调-沉默的 BPH 和“核糖体”是下调基因最丰富的途径。这些结果表明 HNF4 可能通过调节核糖体蛋白基因来控制卵结构的动态，进而影响胚胎发育和卵孵化。