August General Meeting

The speaker for our August meeting is Dr Ivy Chen, from Plant Biosecurity and Product Integrity, Department of Primary Industries. She'll tell us about plant sterol modification and its impact on host suitability for sucking and chewing insects. 

Sterols are essential for eukaryotic cell structure and metabolism, yet insects lack the ability to synthesise them de novo. Herbivorous insects often convert plant-derived sterols into cholesterol to sustain development and reproduction. However, plant sterols vary among species, and some are unsuitable for insects. To understand what “Bugs on Steroids” means for insect-plant interactions, we used artificial diets and genetically modified plants with modified sterol profiles to study the plant sterol suitability and insect sterol metabolism. We focused on a sucking insect Myzus persicae and a chewing insect Plutella xylostella, revealing differences in their sterol utilisation strategies related to their different feeding behaviours.