Aphids are phloem-feeding insects that can cause significant damage to crops worldwide, posing a major threat to global food security. Crucially, there is a lack of effective genetic crop resistance against aphids, and the most common method of control is through the use of insecticides. However, insecticides are costly and can harm the environment. Moreover, aphids can develop resistance to them. These insects can deliver proteins to host plants, called effectors, which suppress the plant immune system and promote susceptibility. Recent research has discovered that these aphid effectors interact with host plant proteins in a similar way to effectors from plant pathogenic microbes. This raises important new questions that require immediate attention to develop novel and sustainable protection strategies against aphids. These questions are:
What is the mechanistic and structural basis of aphid effector-triggered susceptibility?
How can we prevent or interfere with aphid effector-triggered susceptibility?
APHIDTRAP will address these questions using an innovative strategy based on the following objectives:
1) We will introduce a structural biology approach to the insect effector biology field to reveal protein 3D structures of aphid effectors and their host protein targets and determine how mutations in these proteins affect interactions and protein functions.
2) We will use both natural variants and mutants of effectors and host protein targets, combined with in planta functional assays to explore plant-aphid molecular co-evolution.
3) We will identify host protein target interactomes and investigate how mutations affect network functionality.
4) We will use the information generated in 1-3 to develop and apply a synthetic biology approach to prevent aphid effector-triggered susceptibility in plants.
