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Insect vectors play a key role in dissemination of viruses that cause important diseases in humans, animals, and plants. Specific understanding of insect–virus interactions leading to successful transmission is a central problem in vector biology and critical to developing effective control strategies. In this issue of PNAS, Sin et al. (1) provide evidence that the genetic determinants of insect transmissibility for tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) reside on the middle RNA (M RNA) segment encoding the viral membrane glycoproteins (GPs) [N-terminal GP (GN) and C-terminal GP(GC)]. This virus is transmitted between plants by insects called thrips (Thripidae, Thysanoptera) and is the type member of the genus Tospovirus. The tospoviruses are the only plant-infecting members in the family Bunyaviridae, which consists of many viruses that cause diseases in animals and humans (2). Thus, tospoviruses and their thrips vectors are ideal model systems for elucidating processes of virus infection in disparate hosts that can be extended to viruses of importance to human health. The complex nature of the interplay between thrips, tospoviruses, and their shared plant hosts was first recognized with the discovery that TSWV multiplies in its insect vectors (3, 4). This discovery opened rich and exciting avenues of exploration, including understanding biological and molecular interactions underlying TSWV pathogenesis in plant and insect hosts and the role these processes play in virus evolution. Findings of the last decade show that insect inoculation of tospoviruses into a plant host cannot occur without viral passage across at least three insect organs (the midgut, visceral muscle cells, and salivary glands) that include six membrane barriers (2). Previous hypotheses that tospovirus GPs are essential determinants of thrips acquisition were based on several pieces of experimental evidence: (i) assembly-deficient TSWV isolates could be passed mechanically between plants but were not insect transmissible …

Thrips and tospoviruses come of age: Mapping determinants of insect transmission