LncRNAs are potentially involved in the immune interaction between small brown planthopper and rice stripe virus

Small brown planthopper (SBPH, Laodelphax striatellus Fallen) is an important vector of major crop pathogen rice stripe virus (RSV). Controlling SBPH population is an efficient approach to control RSV. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) have been reported to block virus replication in hosts. However, the function of lncRNAs in RSV infection and replication is still unknown. Here, we aimed to study regulatory mechanisms of lncRNA in an immune system during RSV infection. First, lncRNA genes were predicted from SBPH transcriptomes using a bioinformatics pipeline based on characteristics of lncRNA. We identified 4 786 lncRNA genes corresponding to 5 790 transcripts in SBPH from an RNA-Seq dataset of 15 transcriptomes. Differential expression analysis indicated that 3, 11, and 25 lncRNA genes were highly expressed in gut, salivary gland, and ovary, respectively, of viruliferous SBPH (Student's t-test, P<0.05). We randomly selected eight lncRNAs for expression validation using quantitative real-time PCR, confirming the differential expression of these lncRNAs between viruliferous and non-viruliferous SBPH. In summary, we present evidence that the expression of lncRNA genes was induced by RSV infection, suggesting that RSV might be involved in the antivirus immune system in SBPH and participate in regulating the RSV replication mechanism. These data provide helpful information for future investigations of the interaction between lncRNA and RSV.