Assemblies of the genomes of parasitic wasps using meta-assembly and scaffolding with genetic linkage.

Safe, effective biological-control introductions against invasive pests depend on narrowly host-specific natural enemies with the ability to adapt to a changing environment. As part of a project on the genetic architectures of these traits, we assembled and annotated the genomes of two aphid parasitoids, Aphelinus atriplicis and Aphelinus certus. We report here several assemblies of A.

Response to selection for parasitism of a suboptimal, low-preference host in an aphid parasitoid.

Risks of postintroduction evolution in insects introduced to control invasive pests have been discussed for some time, but little is known about responses to selection or genetic architectures of host adaptation and thus about the likelihood or rapidity of evolutionary shifts. We report here results on the response to selection and genetic architecture of parasitism of a suboptimal, low-preference host species by an aphid parasitoid, , a candidate for introduction against the soy bean aphid, . We selected .

Maize unstable factor for orange1 is essential for endosperm development and carbohydrate accumulation.

Maize (Zea mays L.) Ufo1-1 is a spontaneous dominant mutation of the unstable factor for orange1 (ufo1). We recently cloned ufo1, which is a Poaceae-specific gene highly expressed during seed development in maize.

Immune Suppressive Extracellular Vesicle Proteins of Are Encoded in the Wasp Genome.

are obligate parasitoid wasps that develop in the body of their hosts. During oviposition, female wasps introduce venom into the larval hosts' body cavity. The venom contains discrete, 300 nm-wide, mixed-strategy extracellular vesicles (MSEVs), until recently referred to as virus-like particles.

The Dominant and Poorly Penetrant Phenotypes of Maize Are Caused by DNA Methylation Changes at a Linked Transposon.

The maize () mutant () has been implicated in the epigenetic modifications of (), which regulates the production of the flavonoid pigments phlobaphenes. Here, we show that the gene maps to a genetically recalcitrant region near the centromere of chromosome 10. Transcriptome analysis of mutant and wild-type plants identified a candidate gene in the mapping region using a comparative sequence-based approach.

Overlapping RdDM and non-RdDM mechanisms work together to maintain somatic repression of a paramutagenic epiallele of maize pericarp color1.

Allelic variation at the Zea mays (maize) pericarp color1 (p1) gene has been attributed to epigenetic gene regulation. A p1 distal enhancer, 5.2 kb upstream of the transcriptional start site, has demonstrated variation in DNA methylation in different p1 alleles/epialleles.