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Updated: Dec 10, 2025

Rearing and Double-stranded RNA-mediated Gene Knockdown in the Hide Beetle, Dermestes maculatus
Published on: December 28, 2016
A maturing understanding of the composition of the insect gene repertoire
1Department of Genetic Medicine and Development, University of Geneva Medical School, rue Michel-Servet 1, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, rue Michel-Servet 1, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland; Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, 415 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
Abstract:
Recent insect genome sequencing initiatives have dramatically accelerated the accumulation of genomics data resources sampling species from different lineages to explore the incredible diversity of insect biology. These efforts have built a comprehensive catalogue of the insect gene repertoire, which is expanded with each newly-sequenced genome and continually refined using knowledge from cross-species comparisons and new sources of evidence. Since the sequencing of the very first insect genomes, comparative analyses have identified shared (homologous) and equivalent (orthologous) genes, as well as subsets of genes that appear to be unique. With the number of available insect genomes fast approaching one hundred, a maturing understanding of the composition of the insect gene repertoire broadly partitions it into an expected core of universally-present orthologues and a diverse array of lineage-specific and species-specific genes. While homology and orthology help to build evolutionarily-informed functional hypotheses for many genes from these newly-sequenced genomes, experimental interrogations are required to test such hypotheses and to probe the functions of genes for which homology offers no clues. Such taxonomically-restricted genes may represent the current contents of an evolutionary melting pot, out of which novel adaptations have emerged to make insects the most successful group of animals on Earth.
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