Bark Beetle Research in the Postgenomic Era

Bark beetles (Coleoptera: Scolytinae) are pests of many forests around the world. The rapid development of molecular tools and high-throughput sequencing has permitted the examination of the biological processes of pheromone biosynthesis and host colonization at the genomic and molecular levels. I briefly review the available information on host defence toxicity and then review the currently available transcriptome and genome data available in bark beetles. Using the cytochrome P450 gene family as an example, I show how new sequence information and functional genomics can bring insights into how bark beetles have adapted to their highly defended host tissue where they spend most of their life. Some of the remaining questions to be answered in bark beetle research are also discussed.