Bacterial Semiochemicals and Transkingdom Interactions with Insects and Plants
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences and Technologies, University of Salento, Via Prov.le Lecce-Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
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Insects 2019, 10(12), 441; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects10120441
Received: 13 November 2019
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Revised: 2 December 2019
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Accepted: 5 December 2019
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Published: 8 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Semiochemicals and Insect Behavior)
A peculiar feature of all living beings is their capability to communicate. With the discovery of the quorum sensing phenomenon in bioluminescent bacteria in the late 1960s, it became clear that intraspecies and interspecies communications and social behaviors also occur in simple microorganisms such as bacteria. However, at that time, it was difficult to imagine how such small organisms—invisible to the naked eye—could influence the behavior and wellbeing of the larger, more complex and visible organisms they colonize. Now that we know this information, the challenge is to identify the myriad of bacterial chemical signals and communication networks that regulate the life of what can be defined, in a whole, as a meta-organism. In this review, we described the transkingdom crosstalk between bacteria, insects, and plants from an ecological perspective, providing some paradigmatic examples. Second, we reviewed what is known about the genetic and biochemical bases of the bacterial chemical communication with other organisms and how explore the semiochemical potential of a bacterium can be explored. Finally, we illustrated how bacterial semiochemicals managing the transkingdom communication may be exploited from a biotechnological point of view.
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Keywords:
microbiota; microbiome; symbiosis; insect semiochemicals; bacterial metabolism
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MDPI and ACS Style
Calcagnile, M.; Tredici, S.M.; Talà, A.; Alifano, P. Bacterial Semiochemicals and Transkingdom Interactions with Insects and Plants. Insects 2019, 10, 441. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects10120441
AMA Style
Calcagnile M, Tredici SM, Talà A, Alifano P. Bacterial Semiochemicals and Transkingdom Interactions with Insects and Plants. Insects. 2019; 10(12):441. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects10120441
Chicago/Turabian StyleCalcagnile, Matteo, Salvatore Maurizio Tredici, Adelfia Talà, and Pietro Alifano. 2019. "Bacterial Semiochemicals and Transkingdom Interactions with Insects and Plants" Insects 10, no. 12: 441. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects10120441
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