Changes in Aphid Host Plant Diet Influence the Small-RNA Expression Profiles of Its Obligate Nutritional Symbiont, Buchnera.

ABSTRACT: Plants are a difficult food resource to use, and herbivorous insects have evolved a variety of mechanisms that allow them to fully exploit this poor nutritional resource. One such mechanism is the maintenance of bacterial symbionts that aid in host plant feeding and development. The majority of these intracellular symbionts have highly eroded genomes that lack many key regulatory genes; consequently, it is unclear if these symbionts can respond to changes in the insect's diet to facilitate host plant use. There is emerging evidence that symbionts with highly eroded genomes express small RNAs (sRNAs), some of which potentially regulate gene expression. In this study, we sought to determine if the reduced genome of the nutritional symbiont (Buchnera) in the pea aphid responds to chang

SUBMITTER: Thairu MW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6867890 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature