State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China; CAS Center for Excellence in Biotic Interactions, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China.
State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China.
Insect Biochem Mol Biol. 2022 Feb;141:103702. doi: 10.1016/j.ibmb.2021.103702. Epub 2021 Dec 20.
Helicoverpa armigera and H. assulta are sympatric closely related species sharing two sex pheromone components, (Z)-11-hexadecenal (Z11-16:Ald) and (Z)-9-hexadecenal (Z9-16:Ald) but in opposite ratios, 97:3 and 3:97 respectively. This feature makes them a feasible model for studying the evolution of pheromone coding mechanisms of lepidopteran insects. Despite a decade-long study to deorphanize the pheromone receptor (PR) repertoires of the two species, the comparison of the function of all PR orthologs between the two species is incomplete. Moreover, the ligands of OR14 and OR15 have so far not been found, likely due to the missing of the active ligand(s) in the compound panel and/or incompatibility of heterologous expression systems used. In the present study, we expressed the PR repertoires of both Helicoverpa species in Drosophila T1 neurons to comparatively study the function of PRs. Among those PRs, OR13, OR6, and OR14 of both species are functionally conserved and narrowly tuned, and the T1 neurons expressing each of them respond to Z11-16:Ald, (Z)-9-hexadecenol (Z9-16:OH), and (Z)-11-hexadecenyl acetate (Z11-16:Ac), respectively. While HarmOR16-expressing neurons respond strongly to (Z)-9-tetradecenal (Z9-14:Ald) and (Z)-11-hexadecenol (Z11-16:OH), the neurons expressing HassOR16 mainly respond to Z9-14:Ald and also weakly respond to (Z)-9-tetradecenol (Z9-14:OH). Moreover, HarmOR14b-expressing neurons are activated by Z9-14:Ald, whereas HassOR14b-expressing neurons are sensitive to Z9-16:Ald, Z9-14:Ald, and (Z)-9-hexadecenol (Z9-16:OH). In addition, HarmOR15-expressing neurons are selectively responsive to Z9-14:Ald. However, the Drosophila T1 neurons expressing either HarmOR11 or HassOR11 are silent to all of the compounds tested. In summary, except for OR11, we have deorphanized all the PRs of these two Helicoverpa species using a Drosophila expression system and a large panel of pheromone compounds, thereby providing a valuable reference for parsing the code of peripheral coding of pheromones.
棉铃虫和烟实夜蛾是近缘种，具有两种性信息素成分（Z）-11-十六碳烯醛（Z11-16:Ald）和（Z）-9-十六碳烯醛（Z9-16:Ald），但比例相反，分别为 97:3 和 3:97。这一特征使它们成为研究鳞翅目昆虫信息素编码机制进化的可行模型。尽管对这两个物种的信息素受体（PR）谱进行了长达十年的研究，但对两个物种所有 PR 同源物功能的比较并不完整。此外，到目前为止，还没有发现 OR14 和 OR15 的配体，可能是由于化合物面板中缺少活性配体和/或使用的异源表达系统不兼容。在本研究中，我们在果蝇 T1 神经元中表达了这两个棉铃虫物种的 PR 谱，以比较研究 PR 的功能。在这些 PR 中，两个物种的 OR13、OR6 和 OR14 功能保守且特异性强，表达它们的 T1 神经元分别对 Z11-16:Ald、（Z）-9-十六碳烯醇（Z9-16:OH）和（Z）-11-十六碳烯基乙酸酯（Z11-16:Ac）有反应。而 HarmOR16 表达的神经元对（Z）-9-十四碳烯醛（Z9-14:Ald）和（Z）-11-十六碳烯醇（Z11-16:OH）有强烈反应，而 HassOR16 表达的神经元主要对 Z9-14:Ald 有反应，也对（Z）-9-十四碳烯醇（Z9-14:OH）有较弱反应。此外，HarmOR14b 表达的神经元被 Z9-14:Ald 激活，而 HassOR14b 表达的神经元对 Z9-16:Ald、Z9-14:Ald 和（Z）-9-十六碳烯醇（Z9-16:OH）敏感。此外，HarmOR15 表达的神经元对 Z9-14:Ald 有选择性反应。然而，果蝇 T1 神经元表达 HarmOR11 或 HassOR11 对所有测试化合物均无反应。总之，除了 OR11 之外，我们使用果蝇表达系统和大量信息素化合物对这两个棉铃虫物种的所有 PR 进行了功能鉴定，为解析信息素外周编码的密码提供了有价值的参考。
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