While bedbugs have lived with humans for thousands of years, an increase in resistance to common pesticides in the recent years has led to a rise in urban infestations and caused worries regarding our ability to properly control them, according to the Daily Mail. Now, researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and Weill Cornell Medicine are attempting to make further steps in their control by assembling the genome of these pests.
After mapping the genome of the ancient bedbug, the team used it as a guide to follow a group of them through the New York subway system. Throughout the process of following them through hundreds of stations, the team discovered something that they did not expect: genetic diversity. This finding will help scientists use this new genetic information on variations in their genomes in order to create insecticides that are effective against genetic diversity.
"Bedbugs are one of New York City's most iconic living fossils, along with cockroaches, meaning that their outward appearance has hardly changed throughout their long lineage," said George Amato, director of Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. "But despite their static look, we know that they continue to evolve, mostly in ways that make it harder for humans to dissociate with them."
"This work gives us the genetic basis to explore the bedbug's basic biology and its adaptation to sense human environments," he added.
The team found that bedbugs in northern Manhattan share a closer relation to those in the southern part of the island, whereas those in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side show bigger variations, The Toronto Star reported. The reason for this is likely due to the subway design - in Manhattan, subway liens run north to south along the length of the island, whereas there is no connection between the East Side and the West Side through Central Park.
In order to create the genetic map that was the foundation of the project, the researchers utilized a bedbug colony at the museum, according to The Hamilton Spectator.
The findings were published in the Feb. 2 issue of Nature Communications.
