Detecting Virus and Salivary Proteins of a Leafhopper Vector in the Plant Host

Summary

This protocol demonstrates how to use the plant host to detect salivary proteins of leafhopper and plant viral proteins released by leafhopper vectors.

Abstract

Insect vectors horizontally transmit many plant viruses of agricultural importance. More than one-half of plant viruses are transmitted by hemipteran insects that have piercing-sucking mouthparts. During viral transmission, the insect saliva bridges the virus-vector-host because the saliva vectors viruses, and the insect proteins, trigger or suppress the immune response of plants from insects into plant hosts. The identification and functional analyses of salivary proteins are becoming a new area of focus in the research field of arbovirus-host interactions. This protocol provides a system to detect proteins in the saliva of leafhoppers using the plant host. The leafhopper vector Nephotettix cincticeps infected with rice dwarf virus (RDV) serves as an example. The vitellogenin and major outer capsid protein P8 of RDV vectored by the saliva of N. cincticeps can be detected simultaneously in the rice plant that N. cincticeps feeds on. This method is applicable for testing the salivary proteins that are transiently retained in the plant host after insect feeding. It is believed that this system of detection will benefit the study of hemipteran-virus-plant or hemipteran-plant interactions.

Introduction

The vector-host transmission mode of arboviruses, a fundamental problem, is at the frontier of biological science. Many plant viruses of agricultural importance are horizontally transmitted by insect vectors¹. More than one-half of plant viruses are vectored by hemipteran insects, including aphids, whiteflies, leafhoppers, planthoppers, and thrips. These insects have distinct features that enable them to efficiently transmit plant viruses¹. They possess piercing-sucking mouthparts and feed on the sap from phloem and xylem, and secrete their saliva^1,2,<....

Protocol

The non-viruliferous adult leafhoppers were propagated in the Vector-borne Virus Research Center in Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, China.

1. Nonviruliferous insect rearing

1. Rear the adults on rice seedlings in a cube cage that is 40 cm x 35 cm x 20 cm (length x width x height). Keep one side of the cage covered with an insect-proof net for ventilation.
   1. Keep the cages with leafhoppers in an incubator that contains an in-built humidity controller at 26 °C with a relative humidity of 60-75% under a photoperiod of 16 h light and 8 h dark.
2. Use an aspirator to gently transfer all th....

Results

Figure 1 illustrates all of the steps in this protocol: insect rearing, virus acquisition, the collection of salivary proteins via rice feeding, and the western blot. The western blots results showed that specific and expected bands of approximately 220 kDa were observed in the samples of feeding rice and salivary glands of insects on the membrane incubated with antibodies against Vg. In contrast, no band was observed in the non-feeding rice sample. The result in

Discussion

The saliva directly secreted by the salivary glands of the piercing-sucking insects plays a pivotal role because it predigests and detoxifies the host tissues and vectors' cross-kingdom biological factors into the hosts^1,3,4. The cross-kingdom biological factors, including elicitors, effectors, and small RNA, are critical for insect-host communication^14,15,

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Reagents
Tris base	Roche	D609K69032	For 5×Tris-glycine buffer and 10×TBS buffer preparation
glycine	Sigma-Aldrich	WXBD0677V	For 5×Tris-glycine buffer preparation
SDS	Sigma-Aldrich	SLCB4394	For 5×Tris-glycine buffer preparation
NaCl	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10019318	For 10×TBS buffer preparation
KCl	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10016318	For 10×TBS buffer preparation
ß-mercaptoethanol	Xiya Reagent	B14492	For 4× protein sample buffer preparation
bromophenol blue	Sigma-Aldrich	SHBL3668	For 4× protein sample buffer preparation
glycerol	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10010618	For 4× protein sample buffer preparation
methanol	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10014118	For transfer buffer preparation
Tween 20	Coolaber SCIENCE&TeCHNoLoGY	CT30111220	For TBST preparation
non-fat dry milk	Becton.Dickinso and company	252038	For membrane blocking, antibodies dilution
goat anti-rabbit IgG	Sangon Biotech	D110058-0001	Recognization of the primary andtibody
ECL Western kit	ThermoFisher Scientific	32209	Chemiluminescent substrate
nitrocellulose membrane	Pall Corporation	25312915	For proteins transfer
Buffers and Solutions
Buffer	Composition		Comments/Description
5×Tris-glycine buffer	15.1 g Tris base 94 g glycine  5 g SDS in 1 L sterile water		Stock solution
1×Tris-glycine buffer	200 mL of 5×Tris-glycine buffer 800 mL sterile water		Work solution, for SDS-PAGE
10×Tris-buffered saline (TBS) buffer	80 g NaCl 30 g Tris base 2 g KCl in 1 L sterile water		Stock solution
TBS with Tween 20 (TBST) solution	100 mL 10×TBS solution 3 mL Tween 20 900 mL sterile water		Work solution
4× protein sample buffer	8 g SDS 4 mL ß-mercaptoethanol 0.02 g bromophenol blue 40 mL glycerol in 40 mL 0.1 M Tris-HCl (pH 6.8)		For protein extraction
Transfer buffer	800 mL Tris-glycine buffer 200 mL methanol		For protein transfer
Instruments
Bromophenol blue	Sigma-Aldrich	SHBL3668	For 4x protein sample buffer preparation
Constant temperature incubator	Ningbo Saifu Experimental Instrument Co., Ltd.	PRX-1200B	For rearing leafhoppers
Electrophoresis	Tanon Science & Technology Co.,Ltd.	Tanon EP300	For SDS-PAGE
Electrophoretic transfer core module	BIO-RAD	1703935	For SDS-PAGE
glycerol	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10010618	For 4x protein sample buffer preparation
glycine	Sigma-Aldrich	WXBD0677V	For 5x Tris-glycine buffer preparation
goat anti-rabbit IgG	Sangon Biotech	D110058-0001	Recognization of the primary andtibody
High-pass tissue grinding instrument	Shanghai Jingxin Industrial Development Co., Ltd.	JXFSIPRP-24	For grinding plant tissues
KCl	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10016318	For 10x TBS buffer preparation
methanol	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10014118	For transfer buffer preparation
Mini wet heat transfer trough	BIO-RAD	1703930	For SDS-PAGE
NaCl	Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd	10019318	For 10x TBS buffer preparation
nitrocellulose membrane	Pall Corporation	25312915	For proteins transfer
non-fat dry milk	Becton.Dickinso and company	252038	For membrane blocking, antibodies dilution
Pierce ECL Western kit	ThermoFisher Scientific	32209	Chemiluminescent substrate
Protein color instrument	GE Healthcare bio-sciences AB	Amersham lmager 600	For detecting proteins
SDS	Sigma-Aldrich	SLCB4394	For 5x Tris-glycine buffer preparation
Tris base	Roche	D609K69032	For 5x Tris-glycine buffer and 10×TBS buffer preparation
Tween 20	Coolaber SCIENCE&TeCHNoLoGY	CT30111220	For TBST preparation
Vertical plate electrophoresis tank	BIO-RAD	1658001	For SDS-PAGE
Water bath	Shanghai Jinghong Experimental equipment Co., Ltd.	XMTD-8222	For boil the protein samples
β-mercaptoethanol	Xiya Reagent	B14492	For 4x protein sample buffer preparation