Riding the Trojan horse: combating pest insects with their own symbionts

Riding the Trojan horse: combating pest insects with their own symbionts

Insects form an extremely large group of animals and bear a consequently large variety of associated microbes. This microbiota includes very specific and obligate symbionts that provide essential functions to the host, and facultative partners that are not necessarily required for survival. The Tephritidae is a large family that includes many fruit pests such as the Mediterranean fruit fly (the...

Detoxifying symbionts in agriculturally important pest insects

Pest insects lead to excessive agricultural and therefore economical losses on crops worldwide. These insects have to withstand toxic molecules that are inherent to plant defences, as well as those that are produced and introduced by humans in the form of insecticides. In recent years, research on insect-microbe symbioses has recognized that microbial symbionts may play a role protecting agains...

HIV and Mature Dendritic Cells: Trojan Exosomes Riding the Trojan Horse?

Exosomes are secreted cellular vesicles that can induce specific CD4(+) T cell responses in vivo when they interact with competent antigen-presenting cells like mature dendritic cells (mDCs). The Trojan exosome hypothesis proposes that retroviruses can take advantage of the cell-encoded intercellular vesicle traffic and exosome exchange pathway, moving between cells in the absence of fusion eve...

ELT: A Trojan Horse in Disguise?

Many people believe that language teaching is a neutral practice. However, this belief is not without its own opponents. To many scholars, teaching languages cannot be devoid of teaching cultural values of the target language, which tacitly aims at denigrating cultural values of the community of the learners who are learning it. The ultimate purpose of such cultural oppression, according to the...

TESOL: Trojan Horse of Globalisation