Bombyx mori cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus (BmCPV) is one of the most important pathogens of silkworm. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been demonstrated to play key roles in regulating host-pathogen interaction. However, there are limited reports on the miRNAs expression profiles during insect pathogen challenges. In this study, four small RNA libraries from BmCPV-infected midgut of silkworm at 72 h post-inoculation and 96 h post-inoculation and their corresponding control midguts were constructed and deep sequenced. A total of 316 known miRNAs (including miRNA*) and 90 novel miRNAs were identified. Fifty-eight miRNAs displayed significant differential expression between the infected and normal midgut (P value < = 0.01 and fold change > = 2.0 or < = 0.5), among which ten differentially expressed miRNA were validated by qRT-PCR method. Further bioinformatics analysis of predicted target genes of differentially expressed miRNAs showed that the miRNA targets were involved in stimulus and immune system process in silkworm.

Host–pathogen interactions are complex processes and it is a central challenge to reveal these interactions. Fungal infection of silkworm, Bombyx mori, may induce a variety of responsive reaction. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism of silkworm immune response against the fungal infection. To obtain an overview of the interaction between silkworm and an entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana, Digital Gene Expression profiling, a tag based high-throughput transcriptome sequencing method, was employed to screen and identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs, FDR≤0.001, ∣log₂ratio∣≥1) of silkworm larvae during early response against B. bassiana infection. Total 1430 DEGs including 960 up-regulated and 470 down-regulated ones were identified, of which 627 DEGs can be classified into GO categories by Gene Ontology (GO) analysis. KEGG pathways analysis of these DEGs suggested that many biological processes, such as defense and response, signal transduction, phagocytosis, regulation of gene expression, RNA splicing, biosynthesis and metabolism, protein transport etc. were involved in the interaction between the silkworm and B. bassiana. A number of differentially expressed fungal genes were also identified by mapping the sequencing tags to B. bassiana genome. These results provided new insights to the molecular mechanism of silkworm immune response to B. bassiana infection.