Laboratory of Insect Toxicology, Key Laboratory of Pesticide and Chemical Biology, Ministry of Education, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Microbial Signals and Disease Control, Integrative Microbiology Research Centre, College of Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 22;7(1):296. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-00403-5.
While it has been well characterized that chemosensory receptors in guts of mammals have great influence on food preference, much remains elusive in insects. Insect chemosensory proteins (CSPs) are soluble proteins that could deliver chemicals to olfactory and gustatory receptors. Recent studies have identified a number of CSPs expressed in midgut in Lepidoptera insects, which started to reveal their roles in chemical recognition and stimulating appetite in midgut. In this study, we examined expression patterns in midgut of 21 Spodoptera litura CSPs (SlitCSPs) characterized from a previously reported transcriptome, and three CSPs were identified to be expressed highly in midgut. The orthologous relationships between midgut expressed CSPs in S. litura and those in Bombyx mori and Plutella xylostella also suggest a conserved pattern of CSP expression in midgut. We further demonstrated that the expression of midgut-CSPs may change in response to different host plants, and SlitCSPs could bind typical chemicals from host plant in vitro. Overall, our results suggested midgut expressed SlitCSPs may have functional roles, likely contributing to specialization and adaption to different ecosystems. Better knowledge of this critical component of the chemsensation signaling pathways in midguts may improve our understanding of food preference processes in a new perspective.
虽然哺乳动物肠道中的化学感受器对食物偏好有很大影响已得到很好的描述，但昆虫在这方面的研究仍有很多未解之谜。昆虫化学感受蛋白（CSPs）是一种可溶性蛋白，可以将化学物质传递给嗅觉和味觉受体。最近的研究已经确定了一些在鳞翅目昆虫中表达的中肠 CSPs，这些研究开始揭示它们在中肠化学识别和刺激食欲中的作用。在这项研究中，我们检查了先前报道的转录组中 21 种斜纹夜蛾 CSPs（SlitCSPs）在中肠中的表达模式，其中 3 种 CSPs 在中肠中高度表达。中肠表达的 CSPs 在斜纹夜蛾和家蚕以及小菜蛾之间的同源关系也表明了 CSP 在中肠表达的保守模式。我们进一步证明，中肠-CSPs 的表达可能会对不同的宿主植物发生变化，并且 SlitCSPs 可以在体外结合来自宿主植物的典型化学物质。总的来说，我们的结果表明，中肠表达的 SlitCSPs 可能具有功能作用，可能有助于对不同生态系统的专业化和适应。更好地了解中肠 chemsensation 信号通路的这一关键组成部分，可能会从新的视角提高我们对食物偏好过程的理解。
