Animal Physiology and Neurobiology, Department of Biology, Zoological Institute KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2012 Nov 30;3:151. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2012.00151. eCollection 2012.
This review focuses on the state of the art on neuropeptide receptors in insects. Most of these receptors are G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and are involved in the regulation of virtually all physiological processes during an insect's life. More than 20 years ago a milestone in invertebrate endocrinology was achieved with the characterization of the first insect neuropeptide receptor, i.e., the Drosophila tachykinin-like receptor. However, it took until the release of the Drosophila genome in 2000 that research on neuropeptide receptors boosted. In the last decade a plethora of genomic information of other insect species also became available, leading to a better insight in the functions and evolution of the neuropeptide signaling systems and their intracellular pathways. It became clear that some of these systems are conserved among all insect species, indicating that they fulfill crucial roles in their physiological processes. Meanwhile, other signaling systems seem to be lost in several insect orders or species, suggesting that their actions were superfluous in those insects, or that other neuropeptides have taken over their functions. It is striking that the deorphanization of neuropeptide GPCRs gets much attention, but the subsequent unraveling of the intracellular pathways they elicit, or their physiological functions are often hardly examined. Especially in insects besides Drosophila this information is scarce if not absent. And although great progress made in characterizing neuropeptide signaling systems, even in Drosophila several predicted neuropeptide receptors remain orphan, awaiting for their endogenous ligand to be determined. The present review gives a précis of the insect neuropeptide receptor research of the last two decades. But it has to be emphasized that the work done so far is only the tip of the iceberg and our comprehensive understanding of these important signaling systems will still increase substantially in the coming years.
这篇综述重点介绍了昆虫中神经肽受体的最新研究进展。这些受体大多数为 G 蛋白偶联受体（GPCRs），参与调控昆虫生命过程中的几乎所有生理过程。二十多年前，昆虫内分泌学取得了一项里程碑式的成就，即鉴定出第一个昆虫神经肽受体——果蝇速激肽样受体。然而，直到 2000 年果蝇基因组发布，神经肽受体的研究才得以蓬勃发展。在过去的十年中，其他昆虫物种的大量基因组信息也相继问世，这使得我们对神经肽信号系统及其细胞内途径的功能和进化有了更深入的了解。研究表明，这些系统中的一些在所有昆虫物种中都保守存在，这表明它们在生理过程中发挥着至关重要的作用。与此同时，在几个昆虫目或物种中，其他一些信号系统似乎已经丢失，这表明它们的作用在这些昆虫中是多余的，或者其他神经肽已经接管了它们的功能。值得注意的是，神经肽 GPCR 的去孤儿化受到了广泛关注，但随后它们所引发的细胞内途径或其生理功能的研究往往很少受到关注。特别是在除了果蝇之外的昆虫中，这种信息如果不是缺乏的话，也是非常稀缺的。尽管在描述神经肽信号系统方面取得了巨大进展，但即使在果蝇中，仍有几个预测的神经肽受体仍然是孤儿受体，有待确定其内源性配体。本文综述了过去二十年昆虫神经肽受体的研究进展。但必须强调的是，到目前为止所做的工作只是冰山一角，在未来几年内，我们对这些重要信号系统的全面理解还将大大增加。
