NewsEnvironmentResearchers at Queen Mary University of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, discovered genes that create chemicals harmful to insects

Monday, 25th May 2020, 11:22 pm

A set of genes has been identified that could protect ash trees from a deadly beetle, which attacks by burrowing into their stems.

Named the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), the killer pest is expected to destroy hundreds of millions of trees worldwide in the years to come without any intervention.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, discovered genes that create chemicals likely to be harmful to the insects.

They sequenced the genomes of 22 types of ash tree and used this information to analyse how the different species are related to each other.

Help trees fight deadly beetles

Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, in Ohio, tested the resistance of more than 20 ash species to EAB by hatching eggs on the bark of trees, and following the fate of the beetle larvae.

Resistant ash trees killed the larvae when they burrowed into their stems, but susceptible ones did not.

The scientists discovered 53 candidate resistance genes, several of which are involved in making chemicals that are likely to be harmful to insects.

The findings suggest that breeding or gene editing could be used to place these resistance genes into ash species currently affected by EAB.

Dr Laura Kelly, an academic visitor at Queen Mary and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, said: Knowledge of genes involved in resistance will...help efforts to identify trees that are able to survive the ongoing threat from EAB, and in turn, could facilitate restoration of ash woodlands in areas which have already been invaded."

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Gene therapy could help millions of ash trees fight deadly beetle Emerald Ash Borer - inews