Pea aphids, expert survivors of the insect world, appear to lack major biological defenses, according to the first genetic analysis of their immune system. "It's surprising," says Emory biologist Nicole Gerardo, who led the study, published this week in Genome Biology. "Aphids have some components of an immune system, but they are missing the genes that we thought were critical to insect immunity." Pea aphids are major agricultural pests and also important biological models for studies of insect-plant interactions, symbiosis, virus vectoring and genetic plasticity... 
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