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Gilbert C, Maumus F. Sidestepping Darwin: horizontal gene transfer from plants to insects. CURRENT OPINION IN INSECT SCIENCE 2023; 57:101035. [PMID: 37061183 DOI: 10.1016/j.cois.2023.101035] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/25/2022] [Revised: 04/05/2023] [Accepted: 04/06/2023] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
Horizontal transfer of genetic material (HT) is the passage of DNA between organisms by means other than reproduction. Increasing numbers of HT are reported in insects, with bacteria, fungi, plants, and insects acting as the main sources of these transfers. Here, we provide a detailed account of plant-to-insect HT events. At least 14 insect species belonging to 6 orders are known to have received plant genetic material through HT. One of them, the whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Middle East Asia Minor 1), concentrates most of these transfers, with no less than 28 HT events yielding 55 plant-derived genes in this species. Several plant-to-insect HT events reported so far involve gene families known to play a role in plant-parasite interactions. We highlight methodological approaches that may further help characterize these transfers. We argue that plant-to-insect HT is likely more frequent than currently appreciated and that in-depth studies of these transfers will shed new light on plant-insect interactions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Clément Gilbert
- Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, IRD, UMR Evolution, Génomes, Comportement et Ecologie, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
| | - Florian Maumus
- Université Paris-Saclay, INRAE, URGI, Versailles, France
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Xia J, Guo Z, Yang Z, Han H, Wang S, Xu H, Yang X, Yang F, Wu Q, Xie W, Zhou X, Dermauw W, Turlings TCJ, Zhang Y. Whitefly hijacks a plant detoxification gene that neutralizes plant toxins. Cell 2021; 184:3588. [PMID: 34171320 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.06.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
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Xia J, Guo Z, Yang Z, Han H, Wang S, Xu H, Yang X, Yang F, Wu Q, Xie W, Zhou X, Dermauw W, Turlings TCJ, Zhang Y. Whitefly hijacks a plant detoxification gene that neutralizes plant toxins. Cell 2021; 184:1693-1705.e17. [PMID: 33770502 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 103] [Impact Index Per Article: 34.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2020] [Revised: 12/29/2020] [Accepted: 02/04/2021] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Plants protect themselves with a vast array of toxic secondary metabolites, yet most plants serve as food for insects. The evolutionary processes that allow herbivorous insects to resist plant defenses remain largely unknown. The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a cosmopolitan, highly polyphagous agricultural pest that vectors several serious plant pathogenic viruses and is an excellent model to probe the molecular mechanisms involved in overcoming plant defenses. Here, we show that, through an exceptional horizontal gene transfer event, the whitefly has acquired the plant-derived phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase gene BtPMaT1. This gene enables whiteflies to neutralize phenolic glucosides. This was confirmed by genetically transforming tomato plants to produce small interfering RNAs that silence BtPMaT1, thus impairing the whiteflies' detoxification ability. These findings reveal an evolutionary scenario whereby herbivores harness the genetic toolkit of their host plants to develop resistance to plant defenses and how this can be exploited for crop protection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jixing Xia
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Zhaojiang Guo
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Zezhong Yang
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Haolin Han
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Shaoli Wang
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Haifeng Xu
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Xin Yang
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Fengshan Yang
- Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Heilongjiang Province, College of Life Sciences, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
| | - Qingjun Wu
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Wen Xie
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
| | - Xuguo Zhou
- Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0091, USA
| | - Wannes Dermauw
- Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Plant Sciences Unit, 8920 Merelbeke, Belgium; Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
| | - Ted C J Turlings
- Laboratory of Fundamental and Applied Research in Chemical Ecology, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
| | - Youjun Zhang
- Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China.
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Chauhan C, Das De T, Kumari S, Rani J, Sharma P, Tevatiya S, Pandey KC, Pande V, Dixit R. Hemocyte-specific FREP13 abrogates the exogenous bacterial population in the hemolymph and promotes midgut endosymbionts in Anopheles stephensi. Immunol Cell Biol 2020; 98:757-769. [PMID: 32623757 DOI: 10.1111/imcb.12374] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/11/2019] [Revised: 02/12/2020] [Accepted: 07/02/2020] [Indexed: 02/05/2023]
Abstract
The immune blood cells "hemocytes" of mosquitoes impart a highly selective immune response against various microorganisms/pathogens. Among several immune effectors, fibrinogen-related proteins (FREPs) have been recognized as key modulators of cellular immune responses; however, their physiological relevance has not been investigated in detail. Our ongoing comparative RNA-sequencing analysis identified a total of 13 FREPs originating from naïve sugar-fed, blood-fed, bacterial challenged and Plasmodium vivax-infected hemocytes in Anopheles stephensi. Transcriptional profiling of the selected seven FREP transcripts showed distinct responses against different pathophysiological conditions, where an exclusive induction of FREP12 after 10 days of P. vivax infection was observed. This represents a possible role of FREP12 in immunity against free circulating sporozoites and needs to be explored in the future. When challenged with live bacterial injection in the thorax, we observed a higher affinity of FREP13 and FREP65 toward Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria in the mosquito hemocytes, respectively. Furthermore, we observed increased bacterial survival and proliferation, which is likely compromised by the downregulation of TEP1, in FREP13 messenger RNA-depleted mosquito hemolymph. In contrast, after blood-feeding, we also noticed a significant delay of 24 h in the enrichment of gut endosymbionts in the FREP13-silenced mosquitoes. Taken together, we conclude that hemocyte-specific FREP13 carries the unique ability of tissue-specific regulation, having an antagonistic antibacterial role in the hemolymph, and an agonistic role against gut endosymbionts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Charu Chauhan
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India.,Department of Biotechnology, Kumaun University, Nainital, Uttarakhand, India
| | - Tanwee Das De
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India
| | - Seena Kumari
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India.,Department of Biotechnology, Kumaun University, Nainital, Uttarakhand, India
| | - Jyoti Rani
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India
| | - Punita Sharma
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India
| | - Sanjay Tevatiya
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India.,Department of Biotechnology, Kumaun University, Nainital, Uttarakhand, India
| | - Kailash C Pandey
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India
| | - Veena Pande
- Department of Biotechnology, Kumaun University, Nainital, Uttarakhand, India
| | - Rajnikant Dixit
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, ICMR-National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, New Delhi, 110077, India
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Das De T, Thomas T, Verma S, Singla D, Chauhan C, Srivastava V, Sharma P, Kumari S, Tevatiya S, Rani J, Hasija Y, Pandey KC, Dixit R. A Synergistic Transcriptional Regulation of Olfactory Genes Drives Blood-Feeding Associated Complex Behavioral Responses in the Mosquito Anopheles culicifacies. Front Physiol 2018; 9:577. [PMID: 29875685 PMCID: PMC5974117 DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2018.00577] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2017] [Accepted: 05/01/2018] [Indexed: 02/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Decoding the molecular basis of host seeking and blood feeding behavioral evolution/adaptation in the adult female mosquitoes may provide an opportunity to design new molecular strategy to disrupt human-mosquito interactions. Although there is a great progress in the field of mosquito olfaction and chemo-detection, little is known about the sex-specific evolution of the specialized olfactory system of adult female mosquitoes that enables them to drive and manage the complex blood-feeding associated behavioral responses. A comprehensive RNA-Seq analysis of prior and post blood meal olfactory system of An. culicifacies mosquito revealed a minor but unique change in the nature and regulation of key olfactory genes that may play a pivotal role in managing diverse behavioral responses. Based on age-dependent transcriptional profiling, we further demonstrated that adult female mosquito's chemosensory system gradually learned and matured to drive the host-seeking and blood feeding behavior at the age of 5-6 days. A time scale expression analysis of Odorant Binding Proteins (OBPs) unravels unique association with a late evening to midnight peak biting time. Blood meal-induced switching of unique sets of OBP genes and Odorant Receptors (Ors) expression coincides with the change in the innate physiological status of the mosquitoes. Blood meal follows up experiments further provide enough evidence that how a synergistic and concurrent action of OBPs-Ors may drive "prior and post blood meal" associated complex behavioral events. A dominant expression of two sensory appendages proteins (SAP-1 & SAP2) in the legs of An. culicifacies suggests that this mosquito species may draw an extra advantage of having more sensitive appendages than An. stephensi, an urban malarial vector in the Indian subcontinents. Finally, our molecular modeling analysis predicts crucial amino acid residues for future functional characterization of the sensory appendages proteins which may play a central role in regulating multiple behaviors of An. culicifacies mosquito. SIGNIFICANCE Evolution and adaptation of blood feeding behavior not only favored the reproductive success of adult female mosquitoes but also make them important disease-transmitting vectors. An environmental exposure after emergence may favor the broadly tuned olfactory system of mosquitoes to drive complex behavioral responses. But, how these olfactory derived genetic factors manage female specific "pre and post" blood meal associated complex behavioral responses are not well known. Our findings suggest that a synergistic action of olfactory factors may govern an innate to prime learning strategy to facilitate rapid blood meal acquisition and downstream behavioral activities. A species-specific transcriptional profiling and an in-silico analysis predict that "sensory appendages protein" may be a unique target to design disorientation strategy against the mosquito Anopheles culicifacies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tanwee Das De
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India.,Department of Biotechnology, Delhi Technological University, Rohini, India
| | - Tina Thomas
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Sonia Verma
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Deepak Singla
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Charu Chauhan
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Vartika Srivastava
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Punita Sharma
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Seena Kumari
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Sanjay Tevatiya
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Jyoti Rani
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
| | - Yasha Hasija
- Department of Biotechnology, Delhi Technological University, Rohini, India
| | - Kailash C Pandey
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India.,Department of Biochemistry, National Institute for Research in Environmental Health, Indian Council of Medical Research, Bhopal, India
| | - Rajnikant Dixit
- Laboratory of Host-Parasite Interaction Studies, National Institute of Malaria Research, Dwarka, India
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