FFRENCH-CONSTANT , Richard

International audience

The nature and cost of single genes of major effect is one of the longest running controversies in biology. Resistance, whether to xenobiotics or to parasites, is often paraded as an obvious example of a single gene effect that must carry an associated fitness 'cost'. However, a review of the xenobiotic resistance literature shows that...

The past ten years have seen the elucidation of the molecular basis of insect resistance to many chemical insecticides. Target genes, mostly in the nervous system, have been identified and cloned from Drosophila melanogaster and resistance-associated mutations have been examined in a range of pest insects. More recently, with the advent of...

ABSTRACT Photorhabdus is an insect-pathogenic bacterium in which oral toxicity to insects is found in two distinct taxonomic groups. Using a DNA microarray and comparative genomics, we show that oral toxicity is associated with toxin complex genes tcaABC and that this locus can be mobilized or deleted within different strains.