Insects Co-opt Host Genes to Overcome Plant Defences

Insect pests of plants, such as whiteflies, cause immense economic damage both through direct feeding and by transmitting viruses. In a major breakthrough, a paper by Xia et al.¹ shows that some whiteflies have co-opted a gene from their plant host that has helped them neutralize a key component of the plant's defense. Plants produce a range of toxins as part of their defense against insect predation, and Xia et al. ¹ show that, through a horizontal gene transfer (HGT) event from plant to insect, some whiteflies have acquired a gene whose original function was to protect the plants themselves from such damaging toxins through chemical modification that converts them to less harmful forms. Targeting of this gene in whiteflies using RNAi technology provided effective resistance in this ground-breaking study, which should lead others interested in crop protection to explore genes that have been transferred from plants to insects.