Physiological, Biochemical and Molecular Biology Research on Agricultural Pests

A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Protection, Diseases, Pests and Weeds".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 August 2024) | Viewed by 1216

Special Issue Editor

College of Plant Protection, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Interests: insect physiology; biochemistry; molecular biology; genomics; molecular toxicology; insect behavior
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Agricultural pests rely on complex physiological regulation mechanisms, biochemical and molecular biological reactions in the body to strictly control feeding, flight, orientation, excretion, reproduction and other behaviors. The normal exercise of these behaviors results in the pests seriously harming agricultural production and brings difficulties in pest control. Artificial interference with the important physiological regulation mechanism and biochemical, molecular biological reaction of pests can disrupt the behavior sequence of pests and achieve the effect of pest control. Therefore, systematic research on physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology is very important for the efficient control of agricultural pests. However, the previous research on insect physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology mainly focused on revealing the mysteries of insect life.

This Special Issue aims to collect innovative papers that significantly contribute to research physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology of regulating the harmful behavior of agricultural pests to agriculture. It welcomes original research and review papers from different fields, including but not limited to the physiological, biochemical and molecular biology mechanisms that regulate insect feeding, flight, orientation, digestion, excretion and other behaviors.

Dr. Lin Jin
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • agricultural pests
  • physiology
  • biochemistry
  • molecular biology
  • behavioral regulation
  • pest control

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 7151 KiB  
Article
The Baboon Gene Encodes Three Functionally Distinct Transforming Growth Factor β Type I Receptor Variants in Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata
by Yuxing Zhang, Feng Chen, Lin Jin and Guoqing Li
Agriculture 2024, 14(6), 915; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture14060915 - 9 Jun 2024
Viewed by 870
Abstract
The Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β) cascade plays a critical role in insect metamorphosis and involves cell-surface receptors known as type I and II, respectively (TβRI and TβRII). In Drosophila melanogaster, the TβRI receptor, Baboon (Babo), consists of three variants (BaboA, BaboB, and [...] Read more.
The Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β) cascade plays a critical role in insect metamorphosis and involves cell-surface receptors known as type I and II, respectively (TβRI and TβRII). In Drosophila melanogaster, the TβRI receptor, Baboon (Babo), consists of three variants (BaboA, BaboB, and BaboC), each with isoform-specific functions. However, the isoforms and functional specifications of Babo in non-Drosophilid insects have not been established. Here, we examined babo transcripts from seven coleopteran species whose genomes have been published and found that mutually exclusive alternative splicing of the third exon produces three babo isoforms, identical to the Drosophila babo gene. The same three transcript variants were accordingly recognized from the transcriptome data of a coleopteran Henosepilachna vigintioctopunctata. RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated knockdown of all three babo transcripts at the fourth-instar larval stage hindered gut modeling and arrested larval development in H. vigintioctopunctata. All the resultant larvae became arrested prepupae; they were gradually dried and darkened and, eventually, died. Depletion of HvbaboA rather than HvbaboB or HvbaboC is similar to the phenotypic alterations caused by simultaneous RNAi of all three babo isoforms. Therefore, our results established diverged roles of the three Babo isoforms and highlighted the regulatory role of BaboA during larval-pupal transition in a non-Drosophilid insect species. Full article
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