Plant and Soil Science Associate Professor Yolanda Chen has received a USDA AFRI grant for $683,490 from the Pests and Beneficial Species in Agricultural Production Systems program. With colleagues, she will be studying the role of epigenetics in the evolution of insecticide resistance in the Colorado potato beetle, a major pest of potatoes.
Agricultural insect pests show a remarkable ability to evolve resistance to insecticides. Although insecticide resistance is widely considered to be inevitable, the evolutionary processes underlying the evolution of insecticide resistance remain poorly understood. One possible explanation is that insecticide exposure may alter epigenetic modifications, which alter heritable patterns of gene expression without actually changing the underlying DNA sequence. Environmental stress has been shown to influence genome-wide patterns of DNA methylation (a methyl group added CpG dinucleotide), altering patterns of gene expression.
The Colorado potato beetle (CPB), Leptinotarsa decemlineata, has been extraordinarily successful at adapting to all insecticides classes, including the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid. Chen and colleagues will use an experimental evolution approach to test how beetle exposure to sublethal doses of imidacloprid can alter multigenerational and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of insecticide tolerance.
In particular, they will test:
- How does sublethal exposure to imidacloprid influence multigenerational (F2) and transgenerational (F3) patterns of DNA methylation?
- How does sublethal exposure to imidacloprid influence multigenerational (F2) and transgenerational (F3) transcription patterns?
- How does sublethal exposure to imidacloprid influence insecticide resistance and larval performance in the F2 and F3 generations?
- How is variation in DNA methylation correlated with gene expression and genomic variation?
Overall, their goal is to understand fundamental processes affecting the success of an agriculturally-important pest in evolving resistance to insecticides. To learn more about work in Chen’s Insect Agroecology and Evolution Lab, visit https://blog.uvm.edu/yfanslow/.