Comparative Proteomics and Metabonomics Analysis of Different Diapause Stages Revealed a New Regulation Mechanism of Diapause in Loxostege sticticalis (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

Abstract

Histone acetylation is an important epigenetic mechanism that has been shown to play a role in diapause regulation. To explore the physiological and molecular mechanisms of histone deacetylase in the diapause process, LC-MS/MS analysis was used to perform TMT proteomic and metabolomic analysis on non-diapause (ND), pre-diapause (PreD), diapause (D), cold treatment (CT), and post-diapause (RD) stages of the meadow moth. A total of 5367 proteins were identified by proteomics, including 1179 differentially expressed proteins. We found 975 (602 up-regulated and 373 down-regulated), 997 (608 up-regulated and 389 down-regulated), 1119 (726 up-regulated and 393 down-regulated), 1179 (630 up-regulated and 549 down-regulated), 94 (51 up-regulated and 43 down-regulated), 111 (63 up-regulated and 48 down-regulated), 533 (243 up-regulated and 290 down-regulated), 58 (31 up-regulated and 27 down-regulated), and 516 (228 up-regulated and 288 down-regulated) proteins in ND and PreD, ND and D, ND and CT, ND and RD, PreD and D, PreD and CT, PreD and RD, D and CT, D and RD, and CT and RD stages, respectively. A total of 1255 differentially expressed metabolites were annotated by metabolomics. Through KEGG analysis and time series analysis of differentially expressed metabolites, we found that phospholipids were annotated in significantly different modules, demonstrating their important role in the diapause process of the meadow moth. Using phospholipids as an indicator for weighted gene co-expression network analysis, we analyzed the most relevant differentially expressed proteins in the module and found that ribosomal 40s and 60s subunits were the most relevant proteins for diapause. Because there have been studies that have shown that histone deacetylase is associated with the diapause of meadow moths, we believe that histone deacetylase regulates the 40s and 60s subunits of ribosomes, which in turn affects the diapause of meadow moths. This finding expands our understanding of the regulation of meadow moth diapause and provides new insights into its control mechanism.