Deciphering the Plant-Insect Phenotypic Arms Race

Abstract

Plants and herbivorous insects interact with each other on three different time scales. On the ecological time scale, the interacting species, both plants and insects, exhibit a back-and-forth attack-defense-counterdefense cycle, resulting in a phenotypic arms race. Such short-term changes in defenses and counterdefenses of individual plants and insects are mediated by reciprocal elicitation and regulation of gene expressions. All reciprocal regulation of gene expression, in turn, are stimulated by chemical or physical signals, from the environment, the organism itself, or the interaction partner. All signals, no matter internal or external, must be received and processed at the level of individual cells. A number of signals that trigger the reciprocal regulation of plant defense or insect counterdefense genes have been characterized. A growing number of microarray studies have been conducted to define the plant defense and insect counterdefense transcriptomes, i.e., genes whose transcription rate is altered by defense-counterdefense interactions. In this chapter, we reviewed the reciprocal signaling and transcriptome dynamic that underlie the plant-insect phenotypic arms race. (This article was written and prepared by U.S. Government employee(s) on official time, and is therefore in the public domain.)