Jin-Hua Xiao

• PhD
• Professor at Nankai University

Wolbachia is an obligate endosymbiont that is maternally inherited and widely distributed in arthropods and nematodes. It remains in the mature eggs of female hosts over generations through multiple strategies and manipulates the reproduction system of the host to enhance its spreading efficiency. However, the transmission of Wolbachia within the h...

Transposable elements (TEs), acting as symbiotic entities within host genomes, their landscapes represent a pivotal subject in evolutionary discourse. Previous investigations on the impact of ecological niches on the shaping of TE landscapes have yielded inconsistent conclusions. This study assessed the effect of ecological niches on the dynamics o...

The CRISPR/Cas9 system is the most straightforward genome-editing technology to date, enabling genetic engineering in many insects, including the black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens. The white gene plays a significant role in the multifarious life activities of insects, especially the pigmentation of the eyes. In this study, the white gene of H. i...

The co-evolution of fig wasps with fig trees provide an excellent model for studying ecological systems and adaptive evolution. Transposable elements (TEs), as an important component of the genomes, are the powerful driver for environmental adaptation of the organisms. Here, the TEs in the genomes of six pollinator and five non-pollinator species w...

Chalcidoidea is one of the most biologically diverse groups among Hymenoptera. Members are characterized by extraordinary parasitic lifestyles and extensive host ranges, among which several species attack plants or serve as pollinators. However, higher-level chalcidoid relationships remain controversial. Here, we performed mitochondrial phylogenomi...

Wolbachia are the most widely distributed intracellular bacteria, and their most common effect on host phenotype is cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI). A variety of models have been proposed to decipher the molecular mechanism of CI, among which the host modification (HM) model predicts that Wolbachia effectors play an important role in sperm modific...

It is difficult to produce chitin oligosaccharides by hydrolyzing untreated natural chitinous waste directly. In this study, two fungi Talaromyces allahabadensis Hi-4 and Talaromyces funiculosus Hi-5 from rotten black soldier fly were isolated and identified through multigene phylogenetic and morphological analyses. The chitinolytic enzymes were pr...

Particle size is an important indicator for determining the quality of products in the field of functional food. However, for edible insects, which will be important resources in the future, there is little information about the impact of particle size. In this study, traditional grinding technology and superfine grinding technology with additives...

Intestinal contents affect the characterization of edible insect bioactive compounds. Two empty intestine methods, namely, traditional static method (TSM) or salt immersion stress method (SISM), associated with extraction solvents water (W), 50% water-ethanol (W:E) or 100% ethanol (E), were used to obtain six Protaetia brevitarsis larval extracts....

The mutualistic lifestyle of pollinating fig wasps and fig trees provides an excellent model for studying ecological and adaptive evolution issues. Transposable elements (TEs), as an important component of the genomes, are powerful driver for organisms to adapt to environment. Here, the genomic TEs of six pollinating fig wasps and five non-pollinat...

Traditional food packaging films made of plastic have caused serious damage to the environment. Chitosan film is a potential substitute but it is weak in antioxidant activity. In this study, the extract and chitosan from American cockroach were combined to produce a new environment-friendly chitosan film for food packaging. The chitosan film was ea...

In animals, starvation can increase the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in some tissues. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is more vulnerable to being attacked by ROS due to the lack of histone protection, leading to oxidative damage. However, whether starvation is associated with the genetic diversity of mtDNA remains unclear. Here, by using adult...

DNA barcoding and metabarcoding have been increasingly used in species delimitation and species diversity assessment, respectively, and the molecular markers used in animals are mainly derived from mitochondrial DNA. It is well known that the phenomenon of multiple mitochondrial haplotypes within the same specimen (hereafter referred to as “mitotyp...

Insects have a long history of being used in medicine, with clear primary and secondary functions and less side effects, and the study and exploitation of medicinal insects have received increasing attention. Insects gut microbiota and their metabolites play an important role in protecting the hosts from other potentially harmful microbes, providin...

Lipases are the main enzymes involved in lipid metabolism. However, the characteristics of lipases in insects were scarcely investigated. Here, we screened the recently sequenced genomes of 12 fig wasp species consisting of seven pollinator fig wasps (PFWs) and five non-pollinating fig wasps (NPFWs) for the six major lipase gene families. In total,...

Oxidative stress and obesity are critical risk factors for metabolic syndrome. The consumption of functional food ingredients can a viable strategy to alleviate oxidative stress and obesity. In this study, the hydro-ethanolic extract of the edible insect Polyrhachis vicina was prepared and its bioactive components were characterized. The total poly...

It is hard to degrade untreated highly crystalline chitin. In this study, two solvents pretreatment chitin (acid swollen chitin (AC), super fine chitin (FC)) and microwave-heating method were used to enhance nonspecific enzymatic hydrolysis (lysozyme and pepsin), which obviously improved the enzymolysis rates by at least 1.31 times. Characterizatio...

Microbial communities can be critical for many metazoans, which can lead to the observation of phylosymbiosis with phylogenetically related species sharing similar microbial communities. Most of the previous studies on phylosymbiosis were conducted across the host families or genera. However, it is unclear whether the phylosymbiosis signal is still...

Pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) play important roles in detecting pathogens and initiating the innate immune response. Different evolutionary histories of pollinators and non-pollinators may result in different immune recognition systems. A previous study had reported that there were significant differences in peptidoglycan recognition protein...

Accurate assessment of biodiversity is important for scientists, conservationists and policy makers. With the development of DNA barcoding and metabarcoding, many cryptic species have been identified based on the sequence diversity of a ‘barcode’ region in the mitochondrial genome. These molecular identifications have increased the estimated number...

Background The black soldier fly ( Hermetia illucens ) has significant economic potential. The larvae can be used in financially viable waste management systems, as they are voracious feeders able to efficiently convert low-quality waste into valuable biomass. However, most studies on H. illucens in recent decades have focused on optimizing their b...

Maltase can catalyze the hydrolysis of α-1,4-glucosidic linkages and release α-d-glucoses that are used as a source of energy by insects. Maltase has been extensively studied in Lepidoptera and Diptera, while the characterization and evolutionary history of maltase are largely unknown in Hymenoptera. Here, we undertook a bioinformatics study and id...

Chitosan (CS) has limited capacity for Ca(II)-adsorption abilities. Here, glutaraldehyde cross-linked chitosan (GLA-CTS) and maltose chitosan (MAL-CTS) were obtained by physical and chemical modifications to improve the adsorption of Ca²⁺. By comparing the adsorption kinetics and isotherm, the adsorption capabilities of GLA-CTS and MAL-CTS reached...

Figs and fig pollinators are one of the few classic textbook examples of obligate pollination mutualism. The specific dependence of fig pollinators on the relatively safe living environment with sufficient food sources in the enclosed fig syconia implies that they are vulnerable to habitat changes. However, there is still no extensive genomic evide...

Wolbachia is a genus of intracellular symbiotic bacteria that are widely distributed in arthropods and nematodes. These maternally inherited bacteria regulate host reproductive systems in various ways to facilitate their vertical transmission. Since the identification of Wolbachia in many insects, the relationship between Wolbachia and the host has...

Wolbachia are widely distributed in arthropods and nematodes, acquiring nutrients from the hosts, and inducing remarkable reproductive modulations on the hosts. To investigate the interaction of Wolbachia and insects, Wolbachia are often artificially eliminated from Wolbachia-infected hosts, which may produce negative effects of antibiotics. In the...

Wolbachia is a genus of intracellular symbiotic bacteria that are widely distributed in arthropods and nematodes. These maternally inherited bacteria regulate host reproductive systems in various ways to facilitate their vertical transmission. Since the identification of Wolbachia in many insects, the relationship between Wolbachia and the host has...

Among different insects, the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) has been bred in industrial scale successfully as a potential resource of protein, lipid, and antibacterial peptide. However, the application of its chitosan has not been studied widely, which has hindered the sufficient utilization of P. americana. In this paper, the chitosan...

Fig wasps are a group of insects (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea) that live in the compact syconia of fig trees (Moraceae: Ficus). Accurate classification and phylogenetic results are very important for studies of fig wasps, but the taxonomic statuses of some fig wasps, especially the non-pollinating subfamilies are difficult to determine, such as Epich...

Sexual selection can favor production of exaggerated features, but the high cost of such features in terms of energy consumption and enemy avoidance makes them go to extinction under the influence of natural selection. However, fossils preserved with specialized features are very rare. Here, we report a new nymph from Burmese amber, Magnusantena wu...

Fig wasps are a peculiar group of insects which, for millions of years, have inhabited the enclosed syconia of fig trees. Considering the relatively closed and dark environment of fig syconia, we hypothesize that the fig wasps’ oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) pathway, which is the main oxygen consumption and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) producti...

The symbiosis system comprising eukaryotic hosts, intracellular bacterium Wolbachia, and temperate bacteriophages WO is widely spread through nearly half the number of arthropod species. The relationships between the three components of the system are extremely intricate. Even though the bacteriophage WO can have diverse influences on the ecology a...

Mitochondrial DNA sequences can be transferred into the nuclear genome, giving rise to nuclear mitochondrial DNA sequences (NUMTs). NUMTs have been described in numerous eukaryotes. However, the studies on the distribution of NUMTs and its influencing factors are still inadequate and even controversial. Previous studies have suggested that Hymenopt...

Chemosensory proteins (CSP) are a class of acidic soluble proteins which have various functions in chemoreception, resistance and immunity, but we still have very little knowledge on this gene family in fig wasps, a peculiar insects group (Hymenoptera, Chalcidoidea) that shelter in the fig syconia of Ficus trees. Here, we made the first comprehensi...

The innate immunity is the most important defense against pathogen of insects, and the peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs) play an important role in the processes of immune recognition and initiation of Toll, IMD and other signal pathways. In fig wasps, pollinators and non-pollinators present different evolutionary histories and lifestyles,...

Intraspecific male polymorphism exhibiting extreme differences in morphology, behavior and life history presents good opportunities to explore adaptation mechanisms to different environments. In this study, we examined the transcriptomic differences between wingless and winged morphs of a fig wasp species Philotrypesis tridentata to investigate mol...

Background: Wolbachia is a type of intracellular symbiotic bacteria widely distributed in arthropods including most insects and nematodes. These maternally inherited bacteria can regulate the host's reproductive system in various ways for their own vertical transmission. Since the identification of Wolbachia in many insects, the relationship betwee...

In the competition for the opposite sex, sexual selection can favor production of exaggerated features, but the high cost of such features in terms of energy consumption and enemy avoidance makes them go to extinction under the influence of natural selection. However, to our knowledge, fossil on exaggerated traits that are conducive to attracting o...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The aquatic and semiaquatic invertebrates in fossiliferous amber have been reported, including taxa in a wide range of the subphylum Crustacea of Arthropoda. However, no caridean shrimp has been discovered so far in the world. The shrimp Palaemon aestuarius sp. nov. (Palaemonidae) preserved in amber from Chiapas, Mexico during Early Miocene (ca. 22...

It is now widely accepted that Hexapoda emerged from Crustacea. Compared to the ubiquitous calcified exoskeleton in crustaceans, a mineralized cuticle in insects is extremely rare. Catecholamine-driven protein cross-links play a leading role in the sclerotization of insect cuticle. In this study, mineralization was discovered in the pupal cuticle o...

The Dmrt (Doublesex and Mab-3 Related Transcription factor) genes are transcription factors crucial for sex determination and sexual differentiation. In some social insects, Doublesex (dsx) exhibits widespread caste-specific expression across different tissues and developmental stages and has been suggested as a candidate gene for regulating divisi...

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate various biological processes, including insect metamorphosis and sexual dimorphism. The fig-pollinating wasp, Ceratosolen solmsi, is a member of the super family Chalcidoidea, which have mutualistic relationships with their fig tree hosts. C. solmsi exhibits extreme sexual dimorphism, which...

Phage-mediated horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is common in free-living bacteria, and many transferred genes can play a significant role in their new bacterial hosts. However, there are few reports concerning phage-mediated HGT in endosymbionts (obligate intracellular bacteria within animal or plant hosts), such as Wolbachia. The Wolbachia-infecting...

Nucleotide identity of Wolbachia protein-coding genes between wCauB and wRi.

Structural comparison between prophage WO. (A) Gene order comparisons among phage WOcauB3, WONo1, and WONo3 (WONo2 is too short and we didn't take it for further analysis), (B) Gene order comparisons among phage WOcauB2, WORiA, and WORiB1 (WORiB1 and WORiB2 are two identical copies and we just took WORiB1 for analysis). Gray lines connect matched O...

The cumulative GC profile for prophage WOcauB2. (A) Gene presence in prophage WOcauB2. Colors of ORFs are as described in the legend of Figure 2. (B1) z′ curve for prophage WOcauB2. Segmentation points are marked with green squares. Segmentation point coincides with the HGT (B2gp46–B2gp47). (B2) The GC content distribution of prophage WOcauB2, usin...

The cumulative GC profile for prophage WOVitA1. (A) Gene presence in prophage WOVitA1. Colors of ORFs are as described in the legend of Figure 2. (B1) z′ curve for prophage WOVitA1. Segmentation points are marked with green squares. Segmentation point includes the HGT (VA1gp52–VA1gp63). (B2) The GC content distribution of prophage WOVitA1, using a...

Description of primers used in study.

Phylogenetic analysis of Wolbachia MLST genes. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyse demonstrates wNo and wCauB, wRi, and wCauB are divergent Wolbachia strains. The name of each sequence is the abbreviation of the Wolbachia strain (Table 1). Capital letters indicate Wolbachia strain supergroup affiliation from the literature. MLST: multi-locus se...

Nucleotide identity of Wolbachia protein-coding genes between wCauB and wNo.

Selected Wolbachia genes in the wRi genome and their homologs in other Wolbachia genomes.

The cumulative GC profile for prophage WOMelB. (A) Gene presence in prophage WOMelB. Colors of ORFs are as described in the legend of Figure 2. (B1) z′ curve for prophage WOMelB. Segmentation points are marked with green squares. Segmentation point includes the HGT (WD0611–WD0632). (B2) The GC content distribution prophage WOMelB, using a 100 bp sl...

Amphibian populations are experiencing catastrophic declines driven by the fungal pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd). Although horizontal gene transfer (HGT) facilitates the evolution and adaptation in many fungi by conferring novel function genes to the recipient fungi, inter-kingdom HGT in Bd remains largely unexplored. In this study, o...

Exon number for each horizontally transferred gene in the two strains of Bd.

Phylogenetic analyses of horizontally transferred genes in Bd derived from bacteria and oomycete. The Bayesian inference tree is shown unrooted. The Bayesian tree is virtually identical to ML and NJ trees. Numbers at nodes represent bayesian posterior probabilities (left) and bootstrap values of maximum likelihood (middle) and neighbor-joining (rig...

The code (script) and parameters used in the bioinformatic pipeline.

Wolbachia are widespread intracellular bacteria infecting the major classes of arthropods and some filarial nematodes. In arthropods, Wolbachia have evolved various intriguing reproductive manipulations, including cytoplasmic incompatibility, parthenogenesis, feminization, and male killing. Sixteen supergroups of Wolbachia have been identified, nam...

Transformer (tra) is the key gene that turns on the sex-determination cascade in Drosophila melanogaster and in some other insects. The honeybee Apis mellifera has two duplicates of tra, one of which (complementary sex determiner, csd) is the primary signal for complementary sex-determination (CSD), regulating the other duplicate (feminizer). Two t...

Invertebrates can acquire functional genes via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria but fishes are not known to do so. We provide the first reliable evidence of one HGT event from marine bacteria to fishes. The HGT appears to have occurred after emergence of the teleosts. The transferred gene is expressed and regulated developmentally. Its...

Within the closed fig cavity packed with hundreds to thousands of fig wasps from multiple species, sensory structures on the antennae permit males to locate conspecific females for reproduction. When fig wasp females are seeking suitable figs for oviposition, antennal sensory structures perceive volatile compounds released from the target figs. In...

Ty1-copia retrotransposons are widespread and diverse in insects. Some features of their hosts, such as mating and genetic systems, are predicted to influence the spread of selfish genetic elements like Ty1-copia. Using part of the reverse transcriptase gene as a reference, we experimentally surveyed Ty1-copia elements in eight species of fig wasps...

Background Cryptic prophages are genetically defective in their induction and propagation, and are simply regarded as genetic remnants. There are several putative cryptic WO prophages in the sequenced Wolbachia genomes. Whether they are lytic is unclear and their functions are poorly understood. Only three open reading frames (ORFs) in cryptic WO p...

The interaction between figs and their pollinating wasps is regarded as a model system for studying specialized co-evolved mutualism. Chemoreception of fig wasps plays an important role in this interaction, and odorant-binding proteins (OBP) function in the first step of odorant detection. The OBP repertoire of the fig wasp Ceratosolen solmsi is re...

Aphids are a group of insects frequently associated with bacterial symbionts. Although Chinese aphids harbor a high level of species diversity, the associations between Chinese aphids and bacterial symbionts are less known. In this study, we uncovered the diversity of bacterial symbionts in a Chinese widespread aphid, Sitobion miscanthi (Takahashi)...

Wolbachia are widespread in insects and can manipulate host reproduction. Nasonia vitripennis is a widely studied organism with a very high prevalence of Wolbachia infection. To study the effect of Wolbachia infection in Nasonia spp., it is important to obtain noninfected individuals by artificial methods. Current methods that employ sugar water co...

Protandry in insects is the tendency for adult males to emerge before females and usually results from intra-sexual selection. However, the genetic basis of this common phenomenon is poorly understood. Pollinating fig wasp (Agaonidae) larvae develop in galled flowers within the enclosed inflorescences ('figs') of fig trees. Upon emergence, males lo...

Most insects harbor two paralogous circadian genes, namely timeout and timeless. However, in the Hymenoptera only timeout is present. It remains unclear whether both genes, especially timeout in hymenopteran insects, have distinct evolutionary patterns. In this study, we examine the molecular evolution of both genes in 25 arthropod species, for whi...

Fig pollinating wasps form obligate symbioses with their fig hosts. This mutualism arose approximately 75 million years ago. Unlike many other intimate symbioses, which involve vertical transmission of symbionts to host offspring, female fig wasps fly great distances to transfer horizontally between hosts. In contrast, male wasps are wingless and c...

The mutualism between fig trees and their wasp pollinators is a model system for many ecological and evolutionary studies. However, the immature stages of pollinating fig wasps have rarely been studied. We monitored developing fig wasps of known ages and performed a series of dissections at 24 h intervals to identify key developmental traits of Cer...

Temperate bacteriophage WO is a model system for studying tripartite interactions among viruses, bacteria, and eukaryotes, especially investigations of the genomic stability of obligate intracellular bacteria. Few WO genomes exist because of the difficulty in isolating viral DNA from eukaryotic hosts, and most reports are by-products of Wolbachia s...

Many studies have reported horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events from eukaryotes, especially fungi. However, only a few investigations summarized multiple interkingdom HGTs involving important phytopathogenic species of Pyrenophora and few have investigated the genetic contributions of HGTs to fungi. We investigated HGT events in P. teres and P. tr...

The value of 4 index of codon bias: CAI, CBI, Fop and ENC of HGT genes, P. tritici-repentis and top-hit species in non-fungal groups. CAI value. (B) CBI value. (C) Fop value. (D) ENC value. The CAI, CBI, Fop and ENC value of P. tritici-repentis are the mean value of all the CDS. Gene 1–14 refers to the genes coding leucine rich repeat protein, meth...

Lists of 93 fungi used in the analyses. Species with red font means that they associate with plants in their lifestyles. (XLS)

The phylogenetic trees of 16 types HGT genes in Pyrenophora species. Bayesian trees are shown; the ML trees and NJ trees exhibited substantially the same topologies. Nodal support values ≥50 shown (BI/ML/NJ). Asterisks (*) indicate support values <50. Pyrenophora sequences are indicated in red, while HGT gene sequences from other fungi are indicate...

GC and GC3s content of horizontally transferred genes in P. tritici-repentis and top-hit species in non-fungal groups. GC3s and GC content of P. tritici-repentis are the mean values of the complete coding sequence (CDS). Gene 1–14 refers to the genes coding leucine-rich repeat protein, methyltransferase MppJ, beta-galactosidase, UDP-glucosyltransfe...