With the title of "Undead Little Strong", cockroaches always make most humans feel fear and disgust, what is the reason why this creature can live in various dirty corners? Chinese scientists have now cracked the twist through the American cockroaches: their genes turned out to be as high as more than 20,000, almost catching up with humans, and how strong the local survivability of human beings is, the cockroaches will only be stronger.
So those who are always talking about the extinction of cockroaches – sorry, that's just a fantasy, cockroaches will never take a step before humans die, don't underestimate this multibivore insect that has evolved for hundreds of millions of years.
Cockroaches are widely considered pests because they transmit a variety of pathogens. The most common cockroaches in human households are the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) and the Australian cockroach (Periplaneta australasiae); the small ones are about 15 mm long German cockroach (Blattella germanica), The Japanese cockroach (Blattella bisignata) and the Asian cockroach (Blattella asahinai).
As the saying goes, if you have a cockroach in your house, it means that there is a whole nest of cockroaches in a corner, and its fertility is strong, such as a pair of German cockroaches can breed 100,000 offspring a year, which is the most hated and most shadowy roommate of humans.
To understand why we can't get rid of the nightmare of Xiaoqiang, Chinese scientists sequenced the genomes of the American cockroach and compared it with the Australian cockroach, the black brown cockroach (Periplaneta fuliginosa, a species endemic to Taiwan, with a shiny shell), and other species such as termites and German cockroaches.
Sheng Li, an entomologist at South China Normal University and the first author of the paper, found that american cockroaches have the second largest number of genes (more than 20,000) in insects, second only to ordinary locusts, and that there are only about 20,000 to 25,000 protein-coding genes in the human body.
Among them, the American cockroach has more than 1,000 genes that can help detect chemical changes in the environment to confirm which foods are safe; researchers have also interfered with more than 20 genes related to immunity and reproduction, and found that they can indeed weaken the combat effectiveness of cockroaches; in addition, there are some genes that can explain why cockroaches have the incredible ability to quickly regenerate limbs. In other words, it's these genes responsible for sensory perception, immune system, detoxification, growth and reproduction that give cockroaches endless resilience, helping them survive in a variety of incredible environments.
Hopefully, the new discovery is not just out of curiosity, but will help humans find better ways to deal with cockroach pests.
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