2023-04-24 13:45:11
Scientists have for the first time discovered a toxin in the genome of a mosquito, present there through an unusual genetic mechanism.
Walter Jesús Lapadula’s team, from the National University of San Luis in Argentina, has investigated in depth the presence in the Aedes Aegypti mosquito and in the whitefly of a toxin that predominates in plants and bacteria. It is the first time that this toxin is detected in an animal genome.
In his doctoral thesis, the scientist discovered that the genetic mechanism found is a horizontal transfer, that is, an inheritance mechanism that is widely discussed in animals because the foreign gene needs to enter the germ line and that is quite complex.
In a first instance, they found this toxin in the mosquito that transmits Dengue and the Chikungunya virus. During a stay in the United States, Lapadula was able to experimentally corroborate that the presence of this toxin had not been found as a result of contamination, but that it was definitely in the genome “and indeed we observed that it would play a role,” the specialist told Argentina Investiga .
These analyzes showed that these genes positively affect the biological fitness of these insects, that is, that in some way they are being selected and are giving the mosquito an advantage. “As scientists that we are, one question leads us to another and it is difficult to predict where the research will lead”; what we can determine is that this toxin was inserted into the mosquito genome, not to eliminate it but to select it.
Walter Jesus Lapadula. (Photo: National University of San Luis)
At present, a scientific hypothesis is based on the fact that due to the nature of these toxins (if they are toxic agents) it is thought that they could be providing some benefit to insects from the immune perspective, that is, perhaps the benefit they are having having these genes in its genome plays a defensive role against pathogens and other infectious agents. “That is the hypothesis that we have and this project will try to find evidence that supports or refutes this hypothesis. The idea is to characterize these proteins in order to try to see what functional role they may be fulfilling,” said Lapadula.
To explain it better, Lapadula expressed that the evolutionary model proposed by Charles Darwin is basically that all species that exist today have gradually evolved and share relationships of ancestry and descent, that is, that descendant species arise from a species. If this is extrapolated to the very origin of life, all living beings on the planet share a common ancestor, then these genes have been inherited over the years to each of the species that exist on planet Earth. “The logical thing would be to think that if one finds a gene in an animal, it would be expected that it be in all animals, but: what happens with these toxins? Since we only find them in some particular insects and they are not in other animals, we don’t they are in mammals, they are not in other insects; And why do these mosquitoes? How is this possible? And fundamentally: what is the specific role they have? This is being investigated”, concluded the specialist. (Source: Argentina Investiga)
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