Many lepidopteran larvae produce silk secretions to build feeding tubes and cocoons that play important protective roles in their lives. Recent research on the silk of bombycoid and pyralid moths has shown that it contains several highly abundant silk components with remarkable mechanical properties. It was also found to contain a number of other proteins of which the functions have yet to be identified. To gain an overview of the silk composition in more primitive lepidopteran species and to identify the core silk components common to most species, we analyzed the cocoon proteins of Tineola bisselliella, which belongs to the basal ditrysian moth line. Using de novo transcriptome sequencing combined with mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics, we detected more than 100 secretory proteins in the silk cocoons. Fibroin, sericins, and protease inhibitors were found to be the most abundant proteins, along with several novel candidate silk components. We also verified the tissue and developmental stage specificity of the silk protein expression and characterized the morphology of both the silk glands and silk in T. bisselliella. Our study provides a detailed analysis of silk in the primitive moth, expands the known set of silk-specific genes in Lepidoptera, and helps to elucidate their evolutionary relationships.

许多鳞翅目幼虫产生丝状分泌物来构建摄食管和茧，在它们的生活中起着重要的保护作用。最近对菱形蛾和螟蛾蚕丝的研究表明，它含有多种高度丰富的蚕丝成分，具有显着的机械性能。它还被发现含有许多其他蛋白质，其功能尚未确定。为了全面了解更原始的鳞翅目物种的丝成分，并确定大多数物种共有的核心丝成分，我们分析了属于基部 ditrysian 蛾系的Tineola bisselliella的茧蛋白。从头使用转录组测序与基于质谱 (MS) 的蛋白质组学相结合，我们在蚕茧中检测到 100 多种分泌蛋白。发现纤维蛋白、丝胶蛋白和蛋白酶抑制剂是最丰富的蛋白质，以及几种新的候选丝成分。我们还验证了丝蛋白表达的组织和发育阶段特异性，并对T. bisselliella 中丝腺和丝的形态进行了表征。我们的研究提供了对原始蛾的丝的详细分析，扩展了鳞翅目中已知的丝特异性基因集，并有助于阐明它们的进化关系。