MicroRNA miR-7-5p targets MARK2 to control metamorphosis in Galeruca daurica

The MARK2 gene, coding microtubule affinity-regulating kinase or serine/threonine protein kinase, is an important modulator in organism microtubule generation and cell polarity. However, its role in the metamorphosis of insects remains unknown. In this study, we found a conserved miRNA, miR-7-5p, which targets MARK2 to participate in the regulation of the larval-pupal metamorphosis in Galeruca daurica. The dual luciferase reporter assay showed that miR-7-5p interacted with the 3’ UTR of MARK2 and repressed its expression. The expression profiling of miR-7-5p and MARK2 displayed an opposite trend during the larval-adult development process. In in-vivo experiments, overexpression of miR-7-5p by injecting miR-7-5p agomir in the final instar larvae down-regulated MARK2 and up-regulated main ecdysone signaling pathway genes including E74, E75, ECR, FTZ-F1 and HR3, which was similar to the results from knockdown of MARK2 by RNAi. In contrast, repression of miR-7-5p by injecting miR-7-5p antagomir obtained opposite effects. Notably, both overexpression and repression of miR-7-5p in the final instar larvae caused abnormal molting and high mortality during the larval-pupal transition, and high mortality during the pupal-adult transition. The 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) injection experiment showed that 20E up-regulated miR-7-5p whereas down-regulated MARK2. This study reveals that the accurate regulation of miRNAs and their target genes is indispensable for insect metamorphosis.