Abstract
Chemosensory perception in insects involves a broad set of chemosensory proteins (CSPs) that identify the bouquet of chemical compounds present in the external environment and regulate specific behaviors. The current study is focused on the Spodoptera litura (Fabricius) chemosensory-related protein, SlitCSP3, a midgut-expressed CSP, which demonstrates differential gene expression upon different diet intake. There is an intriguing possibility that SlitCSP3 can perceive food-derived chemical signals and modulate insect feeding behavior. We predicted the three-dimensional structure of SlitCSP3 and subsequently performed an accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) simulation of the best-modeled structure. SlitCSP3 structure has six α-helices arranged as a prism and a hydrophobic binding pocket predominated by leucine and isoleucine. We analyzed the interaction of selected host plant metabolites with the modeled structure of SlitCSP3. Out of two predicted binding pockets in SlitCSP3, the plant-derived defensive metabolites 2-b-D-glucopyranosyloxy-4-hydroxy-7-methoxy-1, 4-benzoxazin-3-one (DIMBOA), 6-Methoxy-2–benzoxazolinone (MBOA), and nicotine were found to interact preferably to the hydrophobic site 1, compared to site 2. The current study provides the potential role of CSPs in recognizing food-derived chemical signals, host-plant specialization, and adaptation to the varied ecosystem. Our work opens new perspectives in designing novel pest-management strategies. It can be further used in the development of CSP-based advanced biosensors.
Highlights
Spodoptera litura is a generalist lepidopteran pest with diverse host plant range around the world, including the Asian continent
For the homology modeling of S. litura CSP3 (SlitCSP3), a protein sequence with 123 amino acid residues was retrieved from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database (GenBank ID: ALJ30214.1)
We have performed computer-aided structural modeling of S. litura gut-expressed SlitCSP3 followed by a structure-based analysis of its recognition abilities and binding preferences to different host plant-derived chemical signals
Summary
Spodoptera litura is a generalist lepidopteran pest with diverse host plant range around the world, including the Asian continent. S. litura has a polyphagous larval stage, which defoliates approximately 300 plant species [1]. It has a vast host choice, ranging from weeds and vegetables to economically significant grains and horticulture crops. Substantial resources manage S. litura pests in the field. The contemporary scenario of pest control is achieved by synthetic chemicals, whose persistence has raised a lot of environmental, health, and food-contamination risks. Despite various efforts by an agronomist, this pest is still unmanageable [2]. This has spurred a pertinent need for alternative pest-management strategies
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