Toll-interacting protein participates in immunity and development of the lepidopteran insect .

Toll-interacting protein (Tollip) participates in multiple biological processes. However, the biological functions of Tollip proteins in insects remain to be further explored. Here, the genomic sequence of tollip gene from (named ) was identified with a length of 15,060 bp, including eight exons and seven introns. The predicted protein contained conserved C2 and CUE domains and was highly homologous to those tollips from invertebrates. was highly expressed in fat body compared with other determined tissues. As far as the developmental stages were concerned, the highest expression level was found at the 14th day in eggs or the 3rd day of the 1st instar. was also obviously regulated by lipopolysaccharide, polycytidylic acid or 20E in different tissues. In addition, the interaction between Ap-Tollip and ubiquitin was confirmed by western blotting and pull-down assay. RNAi of significantly affected the expression levels of apoptosis and autophagy-related genes. These results indicated that was involved in immunity and development of .