Mechanisms of Olfaction in Insects - ResearchSpace@Auckland ...

Identification of putative odorant receptors from Epiphyas postvittana 112
A preliminary phylogenetic tree was constructed from multiple sequence alignment of
the 52 E. postvittana ORs together with known ORs from five other moth species B.
mori (Wanner et al., 2007; Tanaka et al. 2009), H. virescens (Krieger et al., 2002,
2004), P. xylostella, M. separata, and D. indica (Mitsuno et al., 2008) (Figure 4.6).
The sequences were obtained from GenBank with accession numbers given in the
mentioned studies. The alignment producing this tree is given in Appendix D. This
tree has been constructed using partial E. postvittana OR sequences therefore the
phylogenetic information presented here may be inaccurate and only the availability
of the full length sequences of these putative ORs will give a true relationship of these
ORs with those from the five other moth species. The male-biased sex pheromone
receptor clade to which all the Lepidoptera PRs identified to date belong to, and the
female-biased clade of B. mori are indicated, together with the highly conserved
Drosophila OR83b clade on Figure 4.6. The putative E. postvittana PRs are shaded in
red. Interestingly, the three sex-biased putative PRs (EpOR30, 33 and 34) cluster
together, leading us to deduce that a different set of ORs (as opposed to the PRs of
other moths forming one clade) have been co-opted in E. postvittana for a role in
pheromone reception.