How Nutritional Interactions in Multi-Partner Symbioses are Structured

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Many insects, including pests of agricultural and medical importance, bear symbiotic bacteria that provide essential nutrients to their insect hosts, but the composition and amount of nutrients transferred between the partners are largely unknown. This project will investigate insect-bacterial nutrient exchange in insects that feed on the extremely nutrient-poor diet of plant xylem sap. Exploiting recent advances in genomics and metabolic modeling, the investigators will quantify the capacity of both insect and bacteria to synthesize key nutrients, and then integrate these results in the form of metabolic models that describe the amount of each nutrient transferred between the partners. These models enable testing of two fundamental predictions: that nutrients produced in excess by one partner are required by other partners, achieving the nutritional efficiency that is required for insects to survive on xylem sap; and that the profile of nutrients received by the insects from their bacterial partners is defined by the overall metabolic network, and not simply the gene content of the bacteria. The integrated molecular understanding of the nutritional interactions between the insects and bacteria generated by this research will identify specific targets for novel pest control strategies against important xylem-feeding insect pests which transmit plant pathogens affecting citrus, grape, coffee and other crops. The project will provide training in state-of-the-art genomic and modeling methods for a postdoctoral researcher and graduate and undergraduate students. To address the increasingly recognized gap between research infrastructure and educational resources in sequence analysis and bioinformatics, the investigators will provide hands-on experience in genomics to students from local higher education institutions with limited genomics educational resources, and also develop lesson plans for genomics/ bioinformatics education in schools.