BIOCOMPLEXITY: Integrating Genomic and Ecological Analysis of Symbiotic Bacteria that Mediate Insect Herbivory

许多以植物为食的昆虫依赖于细菌共生体来补充营养：没有共生体，这些昆虫就不能生长或繁殖。在某些情况下，共生体的传播只发生在母体到后代之间;这些细菌拥有特殊的遗传特征，使它们能够更好地滋养宿主。其他共生体通过其他途径感染宿主，并且表现得不那么专业化。现代基因组学的方法将被用来探索长期共生体的基因含量和基因表达如何影响宿主在不同环境下的营养和生长，例如宿主植物的营养品质不同。此外，兼性共生体对昆虫生长和存活的影响，目前未知的，将进行探讨。实验将测试这些更多的移动共生体是否是由昆虫宿主的寄生虫携带的，或者是否赋予对这些寄生虫的抗性。尽管细菌共生体在昆虫-植物相互作用中是核心，包括影响农作物和森林的那些，但它们的生物学却鲜为人知。这项拟议中的工作将利用分子生物学的最新发展来揭示共生体对植食性昆虫生物学的全面影响。这些结果有可能为昆虫控制提供新的、具体的方法，这些方法可能比常用的化学控制措施成本更低或危害更小。这一项目得到了生物科学司和化学处以及公共科学部多学科活动办公室的支持，将影响若干科学领域，研究结果可能为环境和生物技术应用提供有用的基本信息。

Moran9981432Many plant-feeding insects are dependent on bacterial symbionts tosupplement their nutrition: without symbionts, these insects cannot grow orreproduce. In some cases, transmission of symbionts occurs only from motherto progeny; these bacteria possess specialized genetic traits that allowthem to better nourish their hosts. Other symbionts infect hosts throughother routes and appear less specialized. Approaches from modern genomicswill be used to explore how gene content and gene expression of long-termsymbionts affect host nutrition and growth under different environments,such as host plants differing in nutritional quality. In addition, theeffects of facultative symbionts on insect growth and survival, currentlyunknown, will be explored. Experiments will test whether these more mobilesymbionts are vectored by parasites of the insect hosts or conferresistance to these parasites.Although bacterial symbionts are central in insect-plant interactions,including those affecting agricultural crops and forests, their biology islittle known. The proposed work would exploit recent developments inmolecular biology to reveal the full range of symbiont effects on thebiology of plant-feeding insects. Results have the potential of exposingnovel, specific methods for insect control that might be less costly orhazardous than commonly used chemical control measures. This project, which is being supported by the Directorates for Biological Sciences and and by the Division of Chemistry and the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities, will impact several scientific fields, and the findings may provide basic information useful for both environmental and biotechnological applications.