Multidimensional approaches for studying plant defence against insects: from ecology to omics and synthetic biology

Abstract

The biggest challenge for modern biology is to integrate multidisciplinary approaches towards understanding the organizational and functional complexity of biological systems at different hierarchies, starting from the subcellular molecular mechanisms (microscopic) to the functional interactions of ecological communities (macroscopic). The plant-insect interaction is a good model for this purpose with the availability of an enormous amount of information at the molecular and the ecosystem levels. Changing global climatic conditions are abruptly resetting plant-insect interactions. Integration of discretely located heterogeneous information from the ecosystem to genes and pathways will be an advantage to understand the complexity of plant-insect interactions. This review will present the recent developments in omics-based high-throughput experimental approaches, with particular emphasis on studying plant defence responses against insect attack. The review highlights the importance of using integrative systems approaches to study plant-insect interactions from the macroscopic to the microscopic level. We analyse the current efforts in generating, integrating and modelling multiomics data to understand plant-insect interaction at a systems level. As a future prospect, we highlight the growing interest in utilizing the synthetic biology platform for engineering insect-resistant plants.

Central Metabolic Responses to Ozone and Herbivory Affect Photosynthesis and Stomatal Closure

“…What typically distinguishes metabolomics from targeted analyses or general metabolic profiling is the ambition to integrate with other omics sciences (Fiehn, 2002;Barah and Bones, 2015). Combined with the guiltby-association principle (Bino et al, 2004;Saito et al, 2008), omics analyses allow the prediction of unknown gene and metabolite functions.…”

Insect Gallers and Their Plant Hosts: From Omics Data to Systems Biology

“…Understanding plant-pest interactions at a systems level is indispensable to elucidating the mechanisms behind the interactions. However, a combined understanding of how systems components interact to determine the outcome is required for a holistic view of such a complex, multidimensional system and is becoming increasingly important for developing strategies to control existing and emerging pests [6,74]. …”

“…Plant-insect interactions are increasingly being investigated using omics technologies [6]. One of the benefits of omics data is that it facilitates analysis of non-model organisms, even in cases where little or no prior knowledge of the system exists [7].…”

“…In recent years, omics approaches have been applied to various host-pest interactions [6]. Next-generation omics approaches facilitate the analysis of non-model organisms owing to the rapid generation of large amounts of de novo systems biology data, making them attractive options for studying poorly-characterised interactions [7].…”

Genotype by Environment Interaction Unravels Influence on Secondary Metabolite Quality in Cassava Infested by Bemisia tabaci

“…The processes lead to alteration in metabolite pool of affected plants (Ncube, Finnie, & Van Staden, 2012) sometimes causing a negative impact on plant insect interactions (Jamieson et al, 2017), lower plant fitness and affect total cassava starch yields of up to 100% (Nuwamanya et al, 2014). Some studies have reported the complexity of plant responses to combinations of attacks making it impossible to directly infer from pairwise plant-insect interactions (Barah & Bones, 2017).…”