Diverse phytophagous heteropteran insects, commonly known as stinkbugs, are associated with specific gut symbiotic bacteria, which have been found in midgut cryptic spaces. Recent studies have revealed that members of the stinkbug families Coreidae and Alydidae of the superfamily Coreoidea are consistently associated with a specific group of the betaproteobacterial genus Burkholderia, called th...

Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) has been applied to control insect pests due to its induction of RNA interference (RNAi) of a specific target gene expression. However, developing dsRNA-based insecticidal agent has been a great challenge especially against lepidopteran insect pests due to variations in RNAi efficiency. The objective of this study was to screen genes of chymotrypsins (SeCHYs) essenti...

Mosquito midgut microbiota is a key component of vector competence, as gut bacteria can disturb pathogen development. In this study, we addressed the microbiota composition of Aedes aegypti during its lifespan, under field conditions. We also investigated the possible effects of environment, dietary regime and ageing on the gut community composition. We employed culture independent and dependen...

The midgut microbial community in insect vectors of disease is crucial for an effective immune response against infection with various human and animal pathogens. Depending on the aspects of their development, insects can acquire microbes present in soil, water, and plants. Sand flies are major vectors of leishmaniasis, and shown to harbor a wide variety of Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacte...

The insect gut microbiota plays crucial roles in modulating the interactions between the host and intestinal pathogens. Unlike viruses, bacteria, and parasites, which need to be ingested to cause disease, entomopathogenic fungi infect insects through the cuticle and proliferate in the hemolymph. However, interactions between the gut microbiota and entomopathogenic fungi are unknown. Here we sho...

Novel interventions are needed to prevent the transmission of the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. One possible method is to supply mosquitoes with antiplasmodial effector proteins from bacteria by paratransgenesis. Mosquitoes have a diverse complement of midgut microbiota including the Gram-negative bacteria Asaia bogorensis. This study presents the first use of Asaia sp. bacteria for ...

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are prominent crop pollinators and are, thus, important for effective food production. The honey bee gut microbiota is mainly host specific, with only a few species being shared with other insects. It currently remains unclear how environmental/dietary conditions affect the microbiota within a honey bee population over time. Therefore, the aim of the present study wa...

A novel mosquito antimicrobial peptide, gambicin, and the corresponding gene were isolated in parallel through differential display-PCR, an expressed sequence tag (EST) project, and characterization of an antimicrobial activity in a mosquito cell line by reverse-phase chromatography. The 616-bp gambicin ORF encodes an 81-residue protein that is processed and secreted as a 61-aa mature peptide c...

Malaria affects millions of people worldwide and hundreds of thousands of people each year in Brazil. The mosquito Anopheles aquasalis is an important vector of Plasmodium vivax, the main human malaria parasite in the Americas. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been shown to have a role in insect innate immune responses as a potent pathogen-killing agent. We investigated the mechanisms of free...