BEETLES DO IT COMBINATORIALLY

Abstract

Insects may not know how to read, but that's not to say they don't like libraries. A new study finds that squash beetle pupae have developed a unique way of defending themselves from predators—they secrete droplets containing a varied collection, or library, of defensive agents produced combinatorially from three simple precursor compounds. The finding that beetles are combinatorial chemists—and pretty good ones, at that—was reported last week by professor of chemistry Jerrold Meinwald, professor of chemical ecology Thomas Eisner, and coworkers Frank C. Schroder, Jay J. Farmer, Athula B. Attygalle, and Scott R. Smedley of Cornell University [ Science , 281 , 428 (1998)]. The impetus for the study came from Eisner's realization that squash beetle pupae were covered with apparently defensive glandular hairs and lacked any other visible means of defense. The beetle library consists of a series of large-ring polyamines called polyazamacrolides. These novel structures are oligomers of three hydroxyamino acid...