Can insects be regulated by "foreign" genes?Zhejiang University scientists magically discovered "Cell" on "Cell"

He Dongjian, a reporter from Zhejiang News Client, Ke Yi, Correspondent

The moth in eating

As we all know, genes are transmitted vertically from parents to their children. However, Zhejiang University scientists have recently discovered that many microorganisms quietly pass their genes to insects when they are living with insects. In these "foreigners" teams, there is a genetically important role in insects -without it, male insects will refuse "love" and attach "single".

This research was published in the middle of the night in the middle of the night on July 18, Beijing time, "Institute of Insect Sciences, Institute of Insect Science, Zhejiang University, researcher Huang Jianhua, and Professor Antonis Rokas of Van Donis Rokas author.

The reason why these foreign genes can ignore the law of traditional genetic laws is that they are ghosts on biological evolutionary trees, because it has a unique identical collar: like a monkey, jumps from one branch to another. In other words, its transfer is a horizontal transfer between different biological species. Because of this, they are called horizontal transfer genes.

From 218 high -quality insect genomes and nearly 500,000 gene samples, Zhejiang University scientists have identified a total of 1410 horizontal transfer genes. "From the source, 79%of foreign genes were obtained from bacteria, 13.8%were obtained from fungi, 2.6%were obtained from the virus, 3%were obtained from plants, and the remaining 1.6%we did not know it yet. Source. "Shen Xingxing said.

"We found that the structure and functions of the horizontal metastatic genes also changed with the adaptability of insects. They obtained a number of repeated sections called innerzes from the receptor insect genome, so as to mix it into it and achieve '' to reach '' to achieve '' The purpose of surviving 'on the insect genome. "Shen Xingxing said that the acquisition of the inner contains increases the length of the horizontal transfer gene to reach the average length of other insects' own genes, and on the other hand It is conducive to better play their biological functions.

What role does these 1410 horizontal transfer genes play in insects after years?

The research team chose the pests and small vegetable moths that are very harmful to the crops such as cabbage and broccoli. The "scissors" of gene editing technology are used to cut moths and butterflies. Go, eventually got the mutant they wanted.

"We were surprised to find that compared with wild -type small vegetable moths, the number of mutant small vegetable moths decreased by about 70%, but their growth and development, such as physical length, feeding, reproductive organs, etc.," Huang Jianhua said.

So what causes the number of moths for mutations to decrease sharply? The researchers further verified through behavioral experiments, and found that the desire of mutant small vegetable moths and male insects for females significantly reduced. That is to say, once the gene is missing, the male insects have decreased sharply.

At this point, this study confirmed that the horizontal transfer gene LOC105383139 helps to enhance the male insects for female puppets, and discover the new mechanism of "adult beauty" that helps insects help insects for puppets. At the same time, this study is the first report of the "foreigner" gene to influence biological reproduction.

Regarding the prospect of this research, Shen Xingxing believes that they have discovered the "new key" of insect reproduction, which provides new ideas for the green prevention and control of important agricultural pests in the future. "This mechanism that leads to a sharp decrease in the number of insect descendants can be applied to the production of biological pesticides. It has important and far -reaching significance for new targets and key links for finding pest control." He said.

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