A rice virus deploys an incredible strategy to spread. This is a very recent discovery made by Chinese researchers. Infection of leafhoppers with rice stripe virus causes increased transcription of a gene in its larvae, which causes the presence of the “long-winged” type in male insects.
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Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the magazine Epsiloon tells us today about a virus capable of giving wings to insects.
franceinfo: This is the discovery that has just been made by a Chinese team?
Mathilde Fontez: Yes, it’s not a play on words. The virus really gives wings: it really triggers the growth of wings in insects that did not have them. This is a rice virus widespread in Japan, China and Korea: rice stripe virusit is widely studied for its impact on harvests. But we are only now discovering its craziest power: Lhe attacks the leafhoppers that live on the plant – it is an insect that looks a bit like a grasshopper.
When the virus attacks the larvae of this insect, it is able to modify the transcription of their genes. This triggers a cascade of biochemical reactions that ultimately cause the formation of wings: et the leafhopper flies away.
Is this the first time we’ve seen this?
Actually no: it’s a whole new field of research that has opened up in recent yearsand which astounds researchers. For example, we had already observed this behavior in 2021, with another virus, the cucumber mosaic virus.
With an even more devious strategy: the virus begins by making the plant yellow to attract aphids – who like yellow –before infecting them, and increasing the expression of two genes, to cause the formation of a red nymph which will give winged adults – the green nymphs give wingless adults.
So, it doesn’t work on all insects, only on those that are called polyphenic: that is to say, they can have larger or smaller wings – or not have them – depending on their environment: temperature, food available.
Whether these insects have wings or not, their DNA remains the same. The virus only needs to flip some sort of biochemical switch to initiate the gene expression machinery. But still, it’s a pretty incredible demonstration of the ability of a virus to modify an animal organism.
Is the goal for the virus to spread?
Yes, by giving wings to insects it obviously increases its spread. This discovery could therefore have major implications in agronomy, particularly for rice. It remains to detail the entire mechanism. It also remains to be understood why it is always the wings that are targeted: we could imagine the actions of these viruses on other functions of insects, but it is always the wings.
And that raises deeper, more general evolving questions: what impact do viruses have on the characteristics of living things? Here, we have a sort of co-evolution of animals and viruses…
The study