The mosquito is an important vector of diseases including dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Olfaction is a critical modality for mosquitoes enabling them to locate hosts, sources of nectar, and sites for oviposition. GABA is an essential neurotransmitter in olfactory processing in the insect brain, including the primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrosophila suzukii (Matsumura) (Diptera: Drosophilidae), commonly called spotted wing Drosophila, is an important agricultural pest recognised worldwide. D. suzukii is a pest of soft-skinned fruits as females can lay eggs in ripening fruit before harvest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetic-based methods offer environmentally friendly species-specific approaches for control of insect pests. One method, CRISPR homing gene drive that target genes essential for development, could provide very efficient and cost-effective control. While significant progress has been made in developing homing gene drives for mosquito disease vectors, little progress has been made with agricultural insect pests.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe corn planthopper, Peregrinus maidis, is a vector of several maize viruses and is consequently a significant agricultural pest in many tropical and subtropical regions. As P. maidis has developed resistance to insecticides, the aim of this study was to develop transgenic P.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPiwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that associate with PIWI subfamily proteins, which play an important role in transposon silencing in animal germ cell. The piRNAs biogenesis is divided into two major pathways: primary and secondary, and both pathways are independent of double-stranded RNA-processing enzyme Dicer, which processes the single-stranded RNA transcripts in microRNA (miRNA) and siRNA (small interfering RNA) pathway. Primary piRNAs are processed from long non-coding RNA precursors transcribed from piRNA clusters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDNA methylation is an important epigenetic mechanism involved in gene expression of vertebrates and invertebrates. In general, DNA methylation profile is established by de novo DNA methyltransferases (DNMT-3A, -3B) and maintainance DNA methyltransferase (DNMT-1). DNMT-1 has a strong substrate preference for hemimethylated DNA over the unmethylated one.
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