Fig. 2

Host plant dependent DOG transcript accumulation in T. urticae. A Heatmap of T. urticae DOG transcript accumulation determined by RNAseq (left panel) or by microarray experiments (right-panel). For microarray experiments, expression data from either non-diapausing LS-VL adult females on common bean (diapause), London adult females on common bean (host plant data, MAR-AB, MR-VP, JP-R, Akita, and Tu008R), or LS-VL deutonymph females on bean (SR-VP, SR-TK) were taken as reference to calculate log₂FC values. Gray boxes indicate that for a specific DOG gene no probes were included in the respective T. urticae microarray design, and hence expression could not be estimated. T. urticae DOGs in bold font were functionally characterized in this study. B Transcriptional response of DOGs to tomato defense. The expression of three DOG genes (TuDOG1, TuDOG8, and TuDOG16) was quantified by qPCR in three mite strains that differentially interact with jasmonic acid (JA) mediated tomato defense. Houten-1 induces the JA defenses of tomato and is resistant to it, Santpoort-2 induces JA-defenses and is susceptible to it, while DeLier-1 suppresses tomato defense. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean (n = 4). An asterisk indicates a significant difference (alpha = 0.05). Expression of the three DOG genes was significantly upregulated in the JA-defense susceptible strain Santpooort-2 feeding on the wild type plants compared to the def-1 mutants (P values = 0.002, 0.0001, and 0.0001 with TuDOG1, TuDOG8, and TuDOG16 respectively). The expression of TuDOG16 was also significantly upregulated in the resistant strain Houten-1 feeding on the wild type plants compared to the def-1 mutants (P value = 0.009). The three DOGs were not differentially expressed in the suppressor strain Delier-1 feeding on either wild type plants or def-1 mutants (P values > 0.05)