2. Academic Validation
  3. Whitefly hijacks a plant detoxification gene that neutralizes plant toxins

Whitefly hijacks a plant detoxification gene that neutralizes plant toxins

  • Cell. 2021 Apr 1;184(7):1693-1705.e17. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.014.
Jixing Xia 1,  Zhaojiang Guo 1,  Zezhong Yang 1,  Haolin Han 1,  Shaoli Wang 1,  Haifeng Xu 1,  Xin Yang 1,  Fengshan Yang 2,  Qingjun Wu 1,  Wen Xie 1,  Xuguo Zhou 3,  Wannes Dermauw 4,  Ted C J Turlings 5,  Youjun Zhang 6
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China.
  • 2 Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Heilongjiang Province, College of Life Sciences, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China.
  • 3 Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40546-0091, USA.
  • 4 Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), Plant Sciences Unit, 8920 Merelbeke, Belgium; Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
  • 5 Laboratory of Fundamental and Applied Research in Chemical Ecology, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Electronic address: [email protected].
  • 6 Department of Plant Protection, Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: [email protected].
PMID: 33770502 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.014
Abstract

Plants protect themselves with a vast array of toxic secondary metabolites, yet most Plants serve as food for insects. The evolutionary processes that allow herbivorous insects to resist plant defenses remain largely unknown. The whitefly Bemisia tabaci is a cosmopolitan, highly polyphagous agricultural pest that vectors several serious plant pathogenic viruses and is an excellent model to probe the molecular mechanisms involved in overcoming plant defenses. Here, we show that, through an exceptional horizontal gene transfer event, the whitefly has acquired the plant-derived phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase gene BtPMaT1. This gene enables whiteflies to neutralize phenolic glucosides. This was confirmed by genetically transforming tomato Plants to produce small interfering RNAs that silence BtPMaT1, thus impairing the whiteflies' detoxification ability. These findings reveal an evolutionary scenario whereby herbivores harness the genetic toolkit of their host Plants to develop resistance to plant defenses and how this can be exploited for crop protection.

Keywords

Bemisia tabaci; co-evolution; detoxification; horizontal gene transfer; insect-plant interaction; pest control; phenolic glucoside malonyltransferase; plant secondary metabolite; tomato.

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