LAUSR

Abstract Aspongopus chinensis Dallas, 1851 is an important insect resource with a long utilization history as traditional Chinese medicine and food owing to its various health benefits, including anti-cancer, anti-bacteria, and anti-clotting properties. However, the long period of reproductive diapause during the overwintering stage has limited the broad utilization and artificial cultivation of A. chinensis. Diapause is largely regulated by juvenile hormones. Therefore, understanding the relationship between juvenile hormone metabolism and A. chinensis diapause may provide useful insight for developing genetic engineering strategies to regulate diapause. We identified differentially expressed genes in diapause and non-diapause adults of A. chinensis by transcriptome sequencing. A total of 336,230,260 clean reads were assembled into 80,769 unigenes. Overall, 3,524 differentially expressed genes were identified, including 2,174 down-regulated and 1,350 up-regulated genes in diapause adults. Among these differentially expressed genes, 22 were significantly enriched in the JH III metabolism-related pathway based on Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis. These results provide insight into the molecular-level mechanism of diapause regulation and highlight new targets for preventing diapause to improve A. chinensis cultivation and productivity.