Sackton, TimothyWerren, John H.Clark, Andrew G.2014-03-112013Sackton, Timothy B., John H. Werren, and Andrew G. Clark. 2013. “Characterizing the Infection-Induced Transcriptome of Nasonia vitripennis Reveals a Preponderance of Taxonomically-Restricted Immune Genes.” PLoS ONE 8 (12): e83984. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083984. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083984.1932-6203http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11879559The innate immune system in insects consists of a conserved core signaling network and rapidly diversifying effector and recognition components, often containing a high proportion of taxonomically-restricted genes. In the absence of functional annotation, genes encoding immune system proteins can thus be difficult to identify, as homology-based approaches generally cannot detect lineage-specific genes. Here, we use RNA-seq to compare the uninfected and infection-induced transcriptome in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis to identify genes regulated by infection. We identify 183 genes significantly up-regulated by infection and 61 genes significantly down-regulated by infection. We also produce a new homology-based immune catalog in N. vitripennis, and show that most infection-induced genes cannot be assigned an immune function from homology alone, suggesting the potential for substantial novel immune components in less well-studied systems. Finally, we show that a high proportion of these novel induced genes are taxonomically restricted, highlighting the rapid evolution of immune gene content. The combination of functional annotation using RNA-seq and homology-based annotation provides a robust method to characterize the innate immune response across a wide variety of insects, and reveals significant novel features of the Nasonia immune response.en-USBiologyEvolutionary BiologyEvolutionary ImmunologyGenomic EvolutionGenomicsGenome Analysis ToolsTranscriptomesComparative GenomicsFunctional GenomicsGenome Expression AnalysisImmunologyImmunityInnate ImmunityZoologyEntomologyJournal Article2014-03-1110.1371/journal.pone.0083984