A study published in the international authoritative medical journal "The Lancet" shows that the world's unbalanced diet every year due to high salt, dietary fiber deficiency, low intake of fruits and vegetables, directly or indirectly caused more than 11 million deaths. The harm caused to humans by an unbalanced diet even exceeds the impact of bad habits such as smoking. So, is an unbalanced diet only bad for human health? The answer is "even bugs."
Recently, Luo Jing, school of life sciences of Hubei University, and others found that an unbalanced diet directly led to the death of an agricultural pest. Studies have confirmed that an unbalanced diet leads to disturbances in the intestinal flora of insects and further kills insects. The research results were published in the international authoritative journal Science of the Total Environment under the title "Variation of gut microbiota caused by an imbalance diet is detrimental to bugs' survival". Lecturer Luo Jing and master's student Cheng Yanxia of Hubei University are the co-first authors of the paper, and Professor Lu Min and Associate Professor Xu Lotte are the corresponding authors of the paper.
Medium black blind bugs that feed on plants (A) and aphids (B).
In nature, there are some insects that are very similar to humans and are omnivorous. The food of this type of insect is more extensive, including animals and plants, and the "meat and vegetarian combination" is also paid attention to when eating. The study took the black blind bugs in omnivorous agricultural pests as the study object and found that the reproductive strength of the "meat and vegetarian combination" medium black blind bugs was significantly improved compared with the medium black blind bugs that only ate plants. However, all-meat diets of blind bugs die quickly. Why? The researchers found that bacterial communities that inhabit the gut are key. Such microorganisms can play different roles in different scenarios, on the one hand, intestinal bacteria can improve the nutritional status of the host, promote growth, degrade toxins, etc. On the other hand, some gut bacteria can also have an adverse effect on the host. The study analyzed the differences in the composition of the intestinal flora of black blind bugs after different diets through techniques such as microbiome, and found that after ingestion of "meat", the bacterial richness of Serratia in the intestine increased significantly. Further through quantitative PCR, bacterial isolation and identification, microinjection and other technical means, the mechanism was clarified: the dietary structure of the whole meat led to the rapid accumulation of Serratia marcescens in the intestines of the insect, and the bacteria broke through the intestinal barrier, entered the blood of the blind bugs, and quickly killed the insects.
Different diets lead to disturbance of the microflora of medium-black blind bugs and lead to the death of the host
The study started from the diet structure, taking the intestinal bacterial community as the entry point, and found that the change in the diet structure led to the disturbance of the intestinal flora and eventually led to the death of the host insect. The results of this study not only deepen people's understanding of the importance of a balanced diet, but also provide a theoretical basis for the development of new strategies for the prevention and control of blind bugs.
Thesis link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144880
Source: Guangming Network