Fig. 6

Parasitism by C. chilonis inhibits host amino acid utilization and activates host protein degradation within 72 h after parasitism. Gene set enrichment analyses (GSEA) showed that the genes in the amino acid metabolic pathways of C. suppressalis were largely downregulated at 24 h (A), 48 h (B), and 72 h (C) after parasitism. GSEA also revealed various expression changes of translation-related genes (GO: 0006412) at 24 h (D) and 48 h (E) after parasitism, and a significantly downregulated effect at 72 h (F) after parasitism. In addition, a significantly upregulated pattern of the host proteolysis-related gene set (GO: 0006508) at 72 h (I) after parasitism was found, but not at 24 h (G) or 48 h (H) after parasitism. Moreover, the expression of host storage protein genes was significantly inhibited within 48 h after parasitism (J). But we did not obverse statistical significantly differential gene expression at 72 h after parasitism. The gene expressions between parasitized hosts and controls at 24 h after parasitism (24hAP), 48 h after parasitism (48hAP), and 72 h after parasitism (72hAP) were compared respectively. The mean expression level (FPKM) of each treatment was used for heatmap plotting. Three independent biological replicates of each sample for gene expression analyses were conducted (n = 3). Expression source data are included in Additional file 1: Tables S9-S21