Abstract
The oriental fruit fly, Bactrocera dorsalis (Diptera: Tephritidae), is one of the most destructive pests throughout tropical and subtropical regions in Asia. This insect displays remarkable changes during different developmental phases in olfactory behavior between sexually immature and mated adults. The olfactory behavioral changes provide clues to examine physiological and molecular bases of olfactory perception in this insect. We comparatively analyzed behavioral and neuronal responses of B. dorsalis adults to attractant semiochemicals, and the expression profiles of antenna chemosensory genes. We found that some odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) were upregulated in mated adults in association with their behavioral and neuronal responses. Ligand-binding assays further showed that one of OBP83a orthologs, BdorOBP83a-2, binds with high affinity to attractant semiochemicals. Functional analyses confirmed that the reduction in BdorOBP83a-2 transcript abundance led to a decrease in neuronal and behavioral responses to selected attractants. This study suggests that BdorOBP83a-2 mediates behavioral responses to attractant semiochemicals and could be a potential efficient target for pest control.
Highlights
In insects, olfaction plays a key role in behavior such as host-seeking, mating, and oviposition
We conducted olfactory assays with attractants that have been previously reported effective to B. dorsalis adults (Table S1; Chiu, 1990; Hwang et al, 2002; Tan et al, 2010; Hu et al, 2012; Tan and Nishida, 2012; Kamala Jayanthi et al, 2014; Jayanthi et al, 2014; Pagadala Damodaram et al, 2014)
The expression of antenna-predominant odorant binding proteins (OBPs) was upregulated in the mated flies, and this increase may be related to the need for an increased ability to detect some key volatiles
Summary
Olfaction plays a key role in behavior such as host-seeking, mating, and oviposition. Soluble binding proteins and membrane-bound receptors have crucial functions in chemical signal transduction (Pelosi et al, 2006, 2014; Zhou, 2010; Leal, 2013; Oppenheim et al, 2015). Odorant molecules penetrate into the sensilla via pore tubules and diffuse through sensillar lymph to membrane-bound receptor proteins. Activation of these proteins generates action potentials in receptor neurons. Various functional studies support a role of insect OBPs in olfactory perception. The OBP Lush with a mutation led to reduction in sensitivity of olfactory receptor
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