For those interested in wine production, or symbioses, you maybe interested in a paper we published a few days ago. It was on a study we did of bacterial symbionts of an insect known as the glassy winged sharpshooter. This insect is a vector for Pierce’s Disease in grapes – a nasty disease that if it is found in a vineyard might lead to the vineyard being sacrificed for the greater good.
Anyway – we did a study of bacteria that live inside the insect that make nutrients for their insect host and without whcih the insect will die. An understanding of these symbionts will hopefully lead to better methods to control the spread of this invasive insect.
Our paper can be found in PLoS Biology here.
A synopsis of our article is here.
An article in Science Now about our study is here
An article in the Central Valley Business Times is here.
Nature highlighted it in their “Research highlights” section
And ASM article about this here
Link to our collaborator’s lab (Nancy Moran)
Some new links about our paper
For more information about the sharpshooter and Pierce’s Disease seee the following links
- Pierce’s Disease Control Program for State of California: here
- Glassy winged sharpshooter media information here
- Introduction to Pierce’s Disease here
Wu, D., Daugherty, S., Van Aken, S., Pai, G., Watkins, K., Khouri, H., Tallon, L., Zaborsky, J., Dunbar, H., Tran, P., Moran, N., & Eisen, J. (2006). Metabolic Complementarity and Genomics of the Dual Bacterial Symbiosis of Sharpshooters PLoS Biology, 4 (6) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040188
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