Selection of reference genes for analysis of stress-responsive genes after challenge with viruses and temperature changes in the silkworm Bombyx mori.

Viruses and high temperature (HT) are the primary threats to silkworms. Changes in the expression of stress-response genes can be measured using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) after exposure to viruses or HT. However, appropriate reference genes (RGs) for qPCR data normalization have not been established in this organism. In this study, we summarized the RGs used in the previous silkworm studies after infection with Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus (BmNPV), B. mori cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus (BmCPV), or B. mori densovirus (BmDNV) or after HT treatment. The expression levels of these RGs were extracted from silkworm transcriptome data to screen for candidate RGs that were unaffected by the experimental conditions. Actin-1 (A1), actin-3 (A3), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), and translation initiation factor 4a (TIF-4A) were selected for further qPCR verification. The results of RNA-seq and qPCR showed that GAPDH and TIF-4A were suitable RGs after BmNPV challenge or HT stress, whereas TIF-4A was an appropriate RG for BmCPV or BmDNV-Z challenge in silkworms. These results suggested that TIF-4A may be the most appropriate RG for gene expression analysis after challenge with viruses or HT in silkworms.