Publications by authors named "G Febvay"
Background: The rice weevil Sitophilus oryzae is one of the most important agricultural pests, causing extensive damage to cereal in fields and to stored grains. S. oryzae has an intracellular symbiotic relationship (endosymbiosis) with the Gram-negative bacterium Sodalis pierantonius and is a valuable model to decipher host-symbiont molecular interactions.
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- The study focuses on the genome sequencing of the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus, contributing to the understanding of the Hemiptera insect order.
- The genome, which is 926 Mb in size, provides insights into protein-coding genes, molecular evolution, and the relationship between feeding ecology and gene structure.
- This research enhances the molecular genetic toolkit for hemipteran species and emphasizes Oncopeltus as a valuable experimental model for future studies in insect genomics.
Nutritional symbioses play a central role in the ability of insects to thrive on unbalanced diets and in ensuring their evolutionary success. A genomic model for nutritional symbiosis comprises the hemipteran , and the gamma-3-proteobacterium, , with genomes encoding highly integrated metabolic pathways. feeds exclusively on plant phloem sap, a nutritionally unbalanced diet highly variable in composition, thus raising the question of how this symbiotic system responds to nutritional stress.
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- Symbiotic relationships are crucial for multicellular organisms, allowing them to gain new traits and adapt ecologically, particularly noted in insects with intracellular bacterial partners that lead to the evolution of specialized cells called bacteriocytes.
- Research identified a unique cell-death process in bacteriocytes of the hemipteran insect (aphids), characterized by specific morphological changes distinct from known cell-death mechanisms, which occur progressively during the insect's adult life.
- The study used advanced techniques like electron microscopy and molecular analysis to show that this cell-death process begins in the endoplasmic reticulum and involves vacuole accumulation, cellular stress responses, and the breakdown of endosymbion
Phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) is a key tyrosine-biosynthetic enzyme involved in neurological and melanin-associated physiological processes. Despite extensive investigations in holometabolous insects, a PAH contribution to insect embryonic development has never been demonstrated. Here, we have characterized, for the first time, the PAH gene in a hemimetabolous insect, the aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum.
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