BACKGROUND: The ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter superfamily is comprised predominantly of proteins which directly utilize energy from ATP to move molecules across the plasma membrane. Although they have been the subject of frequent investigation across many taxa, arthropod ABCs have been less well studied. While the manual annotation of ABC transporters has been performed in many arthropods, there has so far been no systematic comparison of the superfamily within this order using the increasing number of sequenced genomes. Furthermore, functional work on these genes is limited. RESULTS: Here, we developed a standardized pipeline to annotate ABCs from predicted proteomes and used it to perform comparative genomics on ABC families across arthropod lineages. Using Kruskal-Wallis tests and the Computational Analysis of gene Family Evolution (CAFE), we were able to observe significant expansions of the ABC-B full transporters (P-glycoproteins) in Lepidoptera and the ABC-H transporters in Hemiptera. RNA-sequencing of epithelia tissues in the Lepidoptera Helicoverpa armigera showed that the 7 P-glycoprotein paralogues differ substantially in their tissue distribution, suggesting a spatial division of labor. It also seems that functional redundancy is a feature of these transporters as RNAi knockdown showed that most transporters are dispensable with the exception of the highly conserved gene Snu, which is probably due to its role in cuticular formation. CONCLUSIONS: We have performed an annotation of the ABC superfamily across > 150 arthropod species for which good quality protein annotations exist. Our findings highlight specific expansions of ABC transporter families which suggest evolutionary adaptation. Future work will be able to use this analysis as a resource to provide a better understanding of the ABC superfamily in arthropods.
