Seminal fluid proteins (SFPs) are produced mainly in the accessory gland of male insects and transferred to females during mating, in which they induce numerous physiological and post-mating behavioral changes. The brown plant hopper (BPH), Nilaparvata lugens, is an economically important hemipterous pest of rice. The behavior and physiology of the female of this species is significantly altered by mating. SFPs in hemipteran species are still unclear.

Whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) damages field crops by sucking sap and transmitting viral diseases. None of the insecticidal proteins used in genetically modified (GM) crop plants to date are effective against whitefly. We report the identification of a protein (Tma12) from an edible fern, Tectaria macrodonta (Fee) C. Chr., that is insecticidal to whitefly (median lethal concentration = 1.49 μg/ml in in vitro feeding assays) and interferes with its life cycle at sublethal doses.

Mealybugs are plant sap-sucking insects with a nested symbiotic arrangement, where one bacterium lives inside another bacterium, which together live inside insect cells. These two bacteria, along with genes transferred from other bacteria to the insect genome, allow the insect to survive on its nutrient-poor diet. Here, we show that the innermost bacterium in this nested symbiosis was replaced several times over evolutionary history. These results show that highly integrated and interdependent symbiotic systems can experience symbiont replacement and suggest that similar dynamics could have occurred in building the mosaic metabolic pathways seen in mitochondria and plastids.

Chlorophyll degradation is an intricate process that is critical in a variety of plant tissues at different times during the plant life cycle. Many of the photoactive chlorophyll degradation intermediates are exceptionally cytotoxic necessitating that the pathway be carefully coordinated and regulated. The primary regulatory step in the chlorophyll degradation pathway involves the enzyme pheophorbide a oxygenase (PAO), which oxidizes the chlorophyll intermediate pheophorbide a, that is eventually converted to non-fluorescent chlorophyll catabolites.

The photoreceptor phototropin mediates various blue light-induced responses, including phototropism, chloroplast movement, stomatal opening, and leaf flattening. Two BTB/POZ proteins, NONPHOTOTROPIC HYPOCOTYL 3 (NPH3) and ROOT PHOTOTROPISM 2 (RPT2), were identified as early signaling components in phototropin-mediated phototropism and leaf flattening, and a phototropin substrate, BLUE LIGHT SIGNALING1 kinase,

The brassinosteroid (BR) signaling pathway has important functions in plant development, but the mechanisms that control its key regulator BR-INSENSITIVE 2 (BIN2) remain poorly understood. We found that the histone deacetylase HDA6 can interact with and deacetylate BIN2 to inhibit its activity, providing significant insights into the repression of BIN2 and the function of the histone deacetylase in modifying nonhistone proteins. We also found that this repression may be related to energy status in plants.

Receptor-like kinase FERONIA (FER) not only serves as a receptor for growth-regulating rapid alkalinization factor (RALF) peptide but also acts as an important node in a variety of other signaling pathways, including plant responses to hormones, pathogens, and abiotic stresses.

Programmable DNA cleavage using CRISPR–Cas9 enables efficient, site-specific genome engineering in single cells and whole organisms. In the research arena, versatile CRISPR-enabled genome editing has been used in various ways, such as controlling transcription, modifying epigenomes, conducting genome-wide screens and imaging chromosomes.

Estimating systemic risk in networks of financial institutions represents, today, a major challenge in both science and financial policy making. This work shows how the increasing complexity of the network of contracts among institutions comes with the price of increasing inaccuracy in the estimation of systemic risk. The paper offers a quantitative method to estimate systemic risk and its accuracy.

Maternal inheritance of mitochondria and mitochondrial genes is a major developmental paradigm in mammals. Propagation of paternal, sperm-contributed mitochondrial genes, resulting in heteroplasmy, is seldom observed in mammals, due to postfertilization targeting and degradation of sperm mitochondria, referred to as “sperm mitophagy.” Our and others’ recent results suggest that postfertilization sperm mitophagy is mediated by the ubiquitin–proteasome system, the major protein-turnover pathway that degrades proteins and the autophagic pathway.