A significant crop pest in the tropics
and subtropics is the Silverleaf whitefly. Researchers from INRAE and CNRS
examined the insect's genome and discovered 49 plant genes that had been
incorporated into the insect's genome.
Never before have there been so many
genes discovered to have been transmitted between a plant and an insect. These
results pave the way for further investigation into the interactions between
plants and insects, which may result in cutting-edge pest management techniques
and a decrease in the usage of pesticides.
Plants and plant-eating insects have
been at war for millions of years, and this conflict has resulted in an arms
race between the two sides. Insects use cunning techniques to get beyond the
signalling and physical and chemical barriers that plants construct. However,
the genes responsible for insect adaptation can come from unexpected places.
Recent 2020 and 2021 demonstrated the
transfer of two plant genes, including one that allows the Silverleaf whitefly
(Bemisia tabaci) to neutralise plant poisons as a defensive mechanism, to its
genome. Two researchers from INRAE and CNRS were intrigued by this discovery
and wanted to know how many genes from plants were included in the whitefly
genome, which was fully sequenced in 2016. Genome Biology and Evolution has
published its most recent findings.
49 Genes of the Insect Genome come from Plants
The researchers used
bioinformatics to analyse the whitefly genome and discovered 49 plant genes
that came from 24 separate horizontal gene transfer events. The majority of
these genes have functional traits, indicating that they are expressed in
insects and contain sequences that exhibit evidence of evolutionary pressure,
suggesting that they may have some sort of function in insects.
The findings of the study also
demonstrate that most of the genes that were discovered have a known role in
interactions between plants and their parasites, such as those that are
responsible for creating enzymes that break down plant cell walls. The whitefly
may have been able to adapt to a wide variety of plant species as a result of a
process of natural selection of plant genes in insects. These transfers all
date back several million years, although the exact origin and process are
still unknown.
It has never been possible to
identify as many gene exchanges between plants and insects. This study paves
the way for further investigations into the interactions between plants and
pests as well as crop pest management strategies. Knowing how transferred genes
affect plants and insects may help develop novel pest control strategies based
on plant breeding (varietal selection) that require fewer pesticides.
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