Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen, China; State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China.
Department of Chemistry-Biology, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany.
Insect Biochem Mol Biol. 2024 Jan;164:104058. doi: 10.1016/j.ibmb.2023.104058. Epub 2023 Dec 9.
Chitin, a natural polymer of N-acetylglucosamine chains, is a principal component of the apical extracellular matrix in arthropods. Chitin microfibrils serve as structural components of natural biocomposites present in the extracellular matrix of a variety of invertebrates including sponges, molluscs, nematodes, fungi and arthropods. In this review, we summarize the frontier advances of insect chitin synthesis. More specifically, we focus on the chitin synthase (CHS), which catalyzes the key biosynthesis step. CHS is also known as an attractive insecticidal target in that this enzyme is absent in mammals, birds or plants. As no insect chitin synthase structure have been reported so far, we review recent studies on glycosyltransferase domain structures derived from fungi and oomycetes, which are conserved in CHS from all species containing chitin. Auxiliary proteins, which coordinate with CHS in chitin biosynthesis and assembly, are also discussed.
几丁质是 N-乙酰葡萄糖胺链的天然聚合物，是节肢动物顶细胞外基质的主要成分。几丁质微纤维作为天然生物复合材料的结构成分存在于各种无脊椎动物的细胞外基质中，包括海绵、软体动物、线虫、真菌和节肢动物。在这篇综述中，我们总结了昆虫几丁质合成的前沿进展。更具体地说，我们专注于几丁质合酶 (CHS)，它催化关键的生物合成步骤。CHS 也被认为是一种有吸引力的杀虫剂靶标，因为这种酶在哺乳动物、鸟类或植物中不存在。由于迄今为止尚未报道昆虫几丁质合酶的结构，我们综述了来自真菌和卵菌的糖基转移酶结构域的最新研究，这些结构域在所有含有几丁质的物种的 CHS 中都是保守的。我们还讨论了在几丁质生物合成和组装中与 CHS 协同作用的辅助蛋白。
