Invasive alien species (IAS) are species whose introduction to areas outside of their native range cause harm to economics, biodiversity, and the environment.  Understanding the genetic basis of invasiveness is critical for preventing invasion by an alien species and managing IAS with eco-friendly control methods.  In addition, uncovering the genomic features of IAS is essential for accurately predicting invasiveness.  However, even though increasing efforts have been devoted to sequencing the genomes of IAS, there is still not an integrated genome database for the invasive biology community.  Here, we first determined a list of invasive plants and animals by mining references and databases.  Then, we retrieved the genomic and gene data of these IAS, and constructed a database, InvasionDB.  InvasionDB encompasses 131 IAS genomes, 76 annotated IAS assemblies, and links these data to conventional functions such as searching for gene coding sequences and Pfam, KEGG, NR annotations, BLAST server, JBrowse, and downloads services.  Next, we analyzed 19 invasiveness-related gene families which confer invasiveness in insects.  To study the roles of noncoding RNA in invasiveness, we also annotated 135 494 miRNAs, 89 294 rRNAs, and 2 671 941 tRNAs from these IAS.  In summary, InvasionDB is useful for studying the invasiveness at the genomic level, and thus helps to develop novel management strategies to control IAS.

 

Non-specific lipid transfer proteins (nsLTPs/LTPs) that can transport various phospholipids across the membrane in vitro are widespread in the plant kingdom, and they play important roles in many biological processes that are closely related to plant growth and development.  Recently, nsLTPs have been shown to respond to different forms of abiotic stresses.  Despite the vital roles of nsLTPs in many plants, little is known about the nsLTPs in wheat.  In this study, 330 nsLTP proteins were identified in wheat and they clustered into five types (1, 2, c, d, and g) by phylogenetic analysis with the nsLTPs from maize, Arabidopsis, and rice.  The wheat nsLTPs of type d included three subtypes (d1, d2, and d3) and type g included seven subtypes (g1–g7).  Genetic structure and motif pattern analyses showed that members of each type had similar structural composition.  Moreover, GPI-anchors were found to exist in non-g type members from wheat for the first time.  Chromosome mapping revealed that all five types were unevenly and unequally distributed on 21 chromosomes.  Furthermore, gene duplication events contributed to the proliferation of the nsLTP genes.  Large-scale data mining of RNA-seq data covering multiple growth stages and numerous stress treatments showed that the transcript levels of some of the nsLTP genes could be strongly induced by abiotic stresses, including drought and salinity, indicating their potential roles in mediating the responses of the wheat plants to these abiotic stress conditions.  These findings provide comprehensive insights into the nsLTP family members in wheat, and offer candidate nsLTP genes for further studies on their roles in stress resistance and potential for improving wheat breeding programs.