Skip to main content
Entomology 2025 Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
 
Oral Presentation
Oral Presentation
Poster Display
Poster Display
Student Competition
Student Competition
Ticketed Event
Ticketed Event

Section Symposium

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Conversations Between Entomologists and Plant Pathologists: Joining Forces to Control Pathogens

A multi-omics informed investigation of Frankliniella occidentalis-specific molecular factors underlying its transmission of tomato spotted wilt virus

Wednesday, November 12, 2025
11:25 AM - 11:40 AM Pacific
Location: Oregon Convention Center, D136, OCC
Oral Presentation

    Presenting Author(s)

  • Lucas de Oliveira (he/him/his)

    Graduate Research Assistant
    North Carolina State University
    Raleigh, North Carolina

    • Co-Author(s)

  • Jinlong Han

    Research Scientist
    Colorado State University
    Fort Collins, Colorado

  • KA

    Karen B. Alviar

    University of the Philippines Los Baños
    Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines

  • HT

    Hao Teh

    University Of Florida
    Gainesville, Florida

  • AW

    Anna Whitfield

    North Carolina State University
    Raleigh, North Carolina

  • DR

    Dorith Rotenberg

    Professor and Director of Graduate Programs - Plant Pathology
    North Carolina State University
    Raleigh, North Carolina

The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande), is a notorious crop pest and vector of Orthotospovirus tomatomaculae, the tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). TSWV is one of the most agronomically significant plant-pathogenic viruses due to its wide host range and global distribution. For efficient transmission to occur, TSWV must first infect the larval thrips gut, replicate, and disseminate throughout the tubular salivary glands before reaching the principal salivary glands. The virus must again replicate prior to inoculating the plant host. Despite the economic importance of this virus-vector system, little is known of the mechanisms governing initial infection of the vector midgut or the molecular factors associated with vector competence. Recent work from our lab has documented both the proteomic and transcriptomic responses of the thrips larval gut to TSWV infection. Gene networks of co-expressed transcripts or proteins that responded to virus infection were identified. We are currently investigating a hub gene identified at both the proteome and transcriptome level. In membrane-based yeast two-hybrid experiments, the expressed protein of this hub gene was determined to interact directly with the TSWV structural protein GN, the viral attachment protein responsible for facilitating thrips gut infection. Functional annotation of this hub transcript/protein will deepen our understanding of thrips vector competence and enable the development of novel management strategies that disrupt the TSWV transmission cycle.