Publications by authors named "Sheng-quan Xu"

Background: Chemosensory perception plays a vital role in insect survival and adaptability, driving essential behaviours such as navigation, mate identification, and food location. This sensory process is governed by diverse gene families, including odorant-binding proteins (OBPs), olfactory receptors (ORs), ionotropic receptors (IRs), chemosensory proteins (CSPs), gustatory receptors (GRs), and sensory neuron membrane proteins (SNMPs). The oriental mole cricket (Gryllotalpa orientalis Burmeister), an invasive pest with an underground, phyllophagous lifestyle, causes substantial crop damage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Leeches are famous for their high medical value and wide environmental adaptability. Among them, cave leeches are a very fascinating and rare group, which is an important component in the study of adaptive evolution of leeches. However, no study has yet reported a reference genome for this group.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background/objectives: The genus Chang (Orthoptera: Eumastacoidea, 1937) is endemic to China, which is mainly distributed in low- and medium-altitude areas in central and eastern China. However, there are relatively few molecular data studies on the genus .

Methods: In this study, three species of the genus were collected from Hubei and Henan, China, namely sp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

(Orthoptera: Rhaphidophoridae: Tachycines) is a widely distributed insect in eastern Asia. This species is common in urban environments, and its unique omnivorous diet may contribute to its success in various habitats. However, molecular studies on the species are scarce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The mole cricket is an evolutionarily, medicinal, and agriculturally significant insect that inhabits underground environments and is distributed globally. This study measured genome size by flow cytometry and k-mer based on low-coverage sequencing, and nuclear repetitive elements were also identified. The haploid genome size estimate is 3.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most butterflies feed on nectar, while some saprophagous butterflies forage on various non-nectar foods. To date, little is known about the genomic and molecular shifts associated with the evolution of the saprophagous feeding strategy. Here, we assembled the high-quality chromosome-level genome of to explore its saprophagous molecular and genetic mechanisms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Gene arrangement (relative location of genes) is another evolutionary marker of the mitogenome that can provide extensive information on the evolutionary mechanism. To explore the evolution of gene arrangements in the mitogenome of diversified Ensifera, we sequenced the mitogenome of the unique dune cricket species found in China and used it for phylogenetic analysis, in combination with 84 known Ensiferan mitogenomes. The mitogenome of is a 16,428-bp circular molecule that contains 37 genes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Although bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) have attracted increasing attention because of their pivotal functions in the process of wound healing and fibrosis alleviation, the underlying molecular mechanisms have been poorly understood. Moreover, transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) is positively correlated with scar formation, whereas TGF-β3 inhibits the pathological scar formation process. However, the relation of TGF-β1, TGF-β3, and the TGF-β/Smad signaling pathway with BMSCs is unknown and requires further investigation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Gut bacteria exert effects on the health and fitness of their insect hosts. Grasshoppers are an important part of the grassland ecosystem and provide important ecosystem services. As the most valuable feature in grassland ecosystem, the compositions and potential influences of gut bacterial in herbivorous grasshoppers in the same ecological environment are essential but undetermined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The grasshopper Subfamily Gomphomastacinae (Orthoptera: Acridoidea: Eumastacidae) is widely distributed in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia. This paper describes three new species: Ptygomastax nihilsulcus Ge, sp. nov.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fieber, 1852 (Orthoptera: Acrididae), is a grasshopper genus comprising approximately 170 species, all of which prefer dry environments such as deserts, steppes, and stony benchlands. In this study, we aimed to examine the adaptation of grasshopper species to arid environments. The genome size of was estimated using flow cytometry, and the first high-quality full-length transcriptome of this species was produced.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

With unique climate, topography, and vegetation, the Qinghai-Tibet plateau is a special biogeographic region with richness of endemic species. However, the taxonomy and distribution of many insect groups on this plateau are still poorly known. Here, we synthesized a species checklist of subfamily Gomphomastacinae (Orthoptera: Acridoidea: Eumastacidae) for this region, while describing a new species: Myrmeleomastax wideis Qiu, sp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The specimens studied were collected with sweep net and pitfall in the forests, agro-forests, herbaceous fallows, and crop fields of 14 localities in the southern part of Cameroon, from August 2015 to February 2018. The results show that Heteracris hannai sp. nov.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Littoral Region of Cameroon is one of the most highly disturbed regions in Cameroon that remain poorly studied and where no investigation regarding the grasshopper fauna has been conducted. Hence a survey was conducted from August 2015 to November 2018 in 11 localities of this region. In each locality, grasshoppers were sampled in three vegetation types (forests, fallows and cultivated farms) using sweep nets sampling method.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Asian Buffalo leech, , is an aquatic sanguivorous species distributed widely in Southeast Asia. has long been used clinically for bloodletting and other medical purposes. Recent studies have focused on artificial culturing, strain optimization, and the identification and development new drugs based on the anticoagulant effects of bites; however, data regarding its genome remain unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is a widely distributed blister beetle of the Meloidae family. It has the ability to synthesize a potent defensive secretion that includes cantharidin, a toxic compound used to treat many major illnesses. However, owing to the lack of genetic studies on cantharidin biosynthesis in , the commercial use of this species is less extensive than that of other blister beetle species in China.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The genus (tribe: Desmodieae) consists of about 40 species that have high medicinal and economic value. However, in this genus, using morphological characters, the species identification is quite complicated, which can be solved by the analysis of the complete chloroplast genomes. As primary organelle genomes, the complete genome sequences of chloroplasts (cp) provide unique molecular information to study the divergence of species, RNA editing, and phylogeny.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

of the tribe Eragrostideae is a taxonomically complex genus, because of its polyploid nature and the presence of similar morphological characters among its species. However, the relationship between these morphologically indistinguishable species at the genomic level has not yet been investigated. Here, we report the complete chloroplast genome of and compare its genome structures, gene contents, simple sequence repeats (SSRs), sequence divergence, codon usage bias, and Kimura 2-parameter (K2P) interspecific genetic distances with those of other Eragrostideae species.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The grasshopper (Acrididae: Oedipodinae), is an agricultural pest to pasture and limitedly distributed in Qinghai-Tibet plateau of China. The complete mitochondrial genome of is 15,620 bp long, which comprises of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes and a putative non-coding control region (GenBank accession ID: MK829651). These genes are unequally distributed on different DNA chains, which 23 are located on the majority Chain.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cadmium (Cd)-containing chemicals can cause serious damage to biological systems. In animals and plants, Cd exposure can lead to metabolic disorders or death. However, for the most part the effects of Cd on specific biological processes are not known.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The medicinal utility of leeches has been demonstrated through decades of use in modern hospital settings, mainly as relievers of venous congestion following flap or digit replantation surgery. In the present study, we sequence and annotate (through BLAST- and Gene Ontology-based approaches) the salivary transcriptome of the nonblood feeding hirudinid and assess the differential gene expression of anticoagulation factors (through both quantitative real-time PCR [qRT-PCR] and in silico-based methods) during feeding and fasting conditions. This was done in order to evince the diversity of putative anticoagulation factors, as well as estimate the levels of upregulation of genes immediately after feeding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Whitmania pigra is a unique, fluid-sucking ectoparasite and an anticoagulant medical leech. The codon usage bias (CUB) is the nonuniform usage of synonymous codons in which some codons are more preferred than others. Here, we performed a comprehensive analysis of CUB of genes in W.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Damselflies and dragonflies, of the order Odonata, have distinct body plans and predatory abilities. Knowledge of their various evolutionary histories will allow for an understanding of the genetic and phenotypic evolution of insects. Mitogenomes are suitable materials to elucidate this, but the mitogenome of only a few odonates have been annotated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Hirudinaria manillensis is an ephemeral, blood-sucking ectoparasite, possessing anticoagulant capacities with potential medical applications. Analysis of codon usage patterns would contribute to our understanding of the evolutionary mechanisms and genetic architecture of H. manillensis, which in turn would provide insight into the characteristics of other leeches.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A quantitative analysis of wing variation in grasshoppers can help us to understand how environmental heterogeneity affects the phenotypic patterns of insects. In this study, geometric morphometric methods were used to measure the differences in wing shape and size of Trilophidia annulata among 39 geographical populations in China, and a regression analysis was applied to identify the major environmental factors contributing to the observed morphological variations. The results showed that the size of the forewing and hindwing were significantly different among populations; the shape of the forewing among populations can be divided into geographical groups, however hindwing shape are geographical overlapped, and populations cannot be divided into geographical groups.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF