The majority of plant-infecting viruses are transmitted to their host plants by vectors. The interactions between viruses and vector vary in duration and specificity but some common themes in vector transmission have emerged: 1) plant viruses encode structural proteins on the surface of the virion that are essential for transmission, and in some cases additional non-structural helper proteins that act to bridge the virion to the vector binding site; 2) viruses bind to specific sites in or on vectors and are retained there until they are transmitted to their plant hosts; and 3) viral determinants of vector transmission are promising candidates for translational research aimed at disrupting transmission or decreasing vector populations. In this review, we focus on well-characterized insect vector-transmitted viruses in the following genera: Caulimovirus, Crinivirus, Luteovirus, Geminiviridae, Reovirus, Tospovirus, and Tenuivirus. New discoveries regarding these genera have increased our understanding of the basic mechanisms of virus transmission by arthropods, which in turn have enabled the development of innovative strategies for breaking the transmission cycle.

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Background: Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genome evolution to be addressed, even across hyper-diverse taxa within arthropods. Results: Using 76 whole genome sequences representing 21 orders spanning more than 500 million years of arthropod evolution, we document changes in gene and protein domain content and provide temporal and phylogenetic context for interpreting these innovations. We identify many novel gene families that arose early in the evolution of arthropods and during the diversification of insects into modern orders. We reveal unexpected variation in patterns of DNA methylation across arthropods and examples of gene family and protein domain evolution coincident with the appearance of notable phenotypic and physiological adaptations such as flight, metamorphosis, sociality, and chemoperception. Conclusions: These analyses demonstrate how large-scale comparative genomics can provide broad new insights into the genotype to phenotype map and generate testable hypotheses about the evolution of animal diversity.

Background:Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genome evolution to be addressed, even across hyper-diverse taxa within arthropods. Results:Using 76 whole genome sequences representing 21 orders spanning more than 500 million years of arthropod evolution, we document changes in gene and protein domain content and provide temporal and phylogenetic context for interpreting these innovations. We identify many novel gene families that arose early in the evolution of arthropods and during the diversification of insects into modern orders. We reveal unexpected variation in patterns of DNA methylation across arthropods and examples of gene family and protein domain evolution coincident with the appearance of notable phenotypic and physiological adaptations such as flight, metamorphosis, sociality and chemoperception. Conclusions:These analyses demonstrate how large-scale comparative genomics can provide broad new insights into the genotype to phenotype map and generate testable hypotheses about the evolution of animal diversity.