The ability to create transgenic or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is not exclusive human and science. Nature has long been so. A study reveals that several species of butterflies in their genome genes carry a parasitic wasp that by injecting a virus. But butterflies have managed to use that to defend genetic material of other viruses.
Tens of thousands of species of parasitic wasps. Unlike the parasitic organisms, such as mosquito or cuckoo, these insects use to his guest, most of the times, killing him. From a human perspective, the wasps have strategies each more cruel and ruthless.
There are, as emerald wasp, you become a zombie cockroach guide it to its nest and lay their eggs inside it, which will serve as food for the larvae inside them. Others, such as coccinellae dinocampus, make ladybugs in forced nannies. Where appropriate, with the setting goes a virus that immobilizes the insect to protect the setting of the wasp, which is developed under their feet.
But what makes the Cotesia congregata is always the eyes human, even more twisted. The females of this wasp develop braconids family of particles of a virus (bracovirus) in their ovaries. At the time of commissioning, they injected both eggs and the bracovirus in its host. The virus neutralizing immune system not to attack caterpillar eggs Wasp. The end of the story is predictable: the eggs hatch and feed it to death
What we have now found a group of researchers from the Université François Rabelais (Tours, France) and the University of Valencia. It is that several species of butterflies, some as famous as the monarch or the silkworm, have in their DNA the genetic material portions Wasp transferred by this bracovirus. But if this parasitoid ends its host, how should adult moths with their genes?
“We have two hypotheses. First, the wasp can parasitize a butterfly than its natural host by mistake . There is also the possibility of failed placed, which injects the virus, but no eggs, “says the researcher of the department of genetics at the University of Valencia and co-author, Salvador Herrero. In fact, the worm C. congregata has the snuff (Manduca sexta) as a specific victim, however, have found no genetic material Wasp in the analyzed specimens of M. sexta.
Although it is the virus which does the work of transferring genes are wasp. The bracovirus are symbiotic viruses carrying on braconids for more than 100 million, with an indistinguishable genetic material wasps. They would like mitochondria of cells of complex organisms to science from the likes of Lynn Margulis and other biologists were bacteria in the past. Like mitochondria, the genuine battery cell tissue, are vital to humans, is essential for survival bracovirus Wasp.
The study, published in the journal PLoS Genetics, said that the loan Hymenoptera gene lepidopteran not now. Calculating the number of changes in the genome and the speed at which they occur, the researchers could delay the molecular clock and travel through time to determine that this horizontal gene transfer (vertical is to parents to children) began at least five million years ago. “Transgenesis has been acting long before we did it in the laboratory,” says Smith.
But nature does not stitch without thread. If a foreign genetic material is active for generations it is to be met by some function. And here is the great paradox. A wasp uses a virus to parasitize a butterfly just passing genes that protect the butterflies from other viruses
The scientists studied closely several genes imported by butterflies to determine that function may have. In the case of the Monarch have not yet clear what will come good genes of a wasp, But several examples of green donut (Spodoptera exigua) administered a solution bracovirus and baculovirus, another specific virus of the caterpillar, while that others were only inoculated baculovirus. Among the first half was with the pathogen.
If you consider that there are tens of thousands of species of parasitic wasps, each with its own unique and different bracovirus, and that parasitize almost all of species of butterflies and moths, it is when this study becomes relevant. As Smith says, “The big problem is that we lack so many lepidopteran genomes as Hymenoptera”. When will solve this problem will arise many more cases of natural GMOs. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria only thing believed, could be as common as genetic inheritance.
For researchers there is a second derivative more disturbing than the fact that humans have lost exclusivity genetically modified organisms: agribusiness is very interested in the development of GMOs for use wasps for the biological control of pests. But if the virus gives more effective in the long run could cause the worms end up being resistant to these and other viruses
Source:. The Country / Miguel Angel Criado
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