"Mining for other functional horizontal transfer genes from host plants into insect pests should yield other key genes that can be excellent targets for the promising RNAi-based insect pest control strategy," it added.

Dr. Roy Kirsch at Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology which located on Beutenberg Campus in Germany is one of the three reviewers of the article.

"The main power of the study is that the research question is addressed from many different angles by drawing a bow from comprehensive metabolic profiling of the plant to comparative genomics of the insect and a bit of everything in between," he said.

Titled Whitefly Hijacks a Plant Detoxification Gene that Neutralizes Plant Toxins, the article will be officially published on April 1, marking the first Cell article with Chinese-led writing in agricultural pest research, according to the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Read the paper via

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00164-1