Transposable element dynamics in Drosophila suzukii: characterization and implications for food consumption-related genes.

Abstract

Drosophila suzukii, a species native to southeast Asia, is a major pest of berry and stone fruit crops. This species has invaded Europe and the Americas in just a few decades, becoming a global concern to agriculture. In contrast to other flies, D. suzukii infests ripening fruits, causing substantial economic losses worldwide. Nevertheless, genomic studies on this species remain insufficient, especially in transposable elements (TEs), which constitute nearly half of its genome and represent a substantially larger genomic fraction than in most other Drosophila species. Given their ability to reshape genome structure and influence gene regulation, TEs have been implicated in adaptive and invasive processes across diverse organisms. Therefore, this study characterized the dynamics of TEs in the genome of D. suzukii by developing a new manually curated reference TE library and generating a comprehensive genome-wide TE annotation employing bioinformatics techniques. Our analysis of TE dynamics highlights key associations between TEs and food consumption-related genes that are unique to the D. suzukii genome and absent in the model species Drosophila melanogaster, which infests rotten fruits. These findings provide new insights about food selection in this species, offering potential targets for developing improved pest management strategies in fruit production.