Screening and Validation of Stable Reference Genes for qRT-PCR Analysis in (Coleoptera: Meloidae).

is a hypermetamorphic insect that mainly forage soybeans during the adult stage. However, the lack of appropriate references hinders our studying of the gene function in . In this study, referring to five computational tools (Ct value, geNorm, NormFinder, BestKeeper and RefFinder), the stability of 10 housekeeping genes (, , , , , , , , and ) was assessed by qRT-PCR under three different conditions (adult ages, tissues/organs and temperatures). The findings suggested that and were the most ideal references for examine gene transcripts among diverse adult ages and at various temperatures; a pair of and was the most reliable genes to assess gene expressions in diverse adult tissues. Finally, the relative expression levels of were computed after normalization and with across diverse adult tissues. As expected, expression was abundant in the foregut, trachea and antenna and scarce in the midgut, hindgut and epidermis. These findings will lay a solid foundation for analyzing the gene expression of .