NEUROPEPTIDES OF PLANT-PARASITIC GALL-FORMING NEMATODES

Abstract

This short review of foreign literature is dedicated to studies of physiological role and functional significance of FMRF-like neuropeptides, their potential targets – Gprotein-coupled receptors (GPCR) and genes (flp family) coding these neuropeptides in nervous system of plant root knot nematodes. It has been shown that FMRFamide-like neuropeptides are able to modulate locomotion reactions of the cyst nematodes causing stimulatory on inhibitory effects on the worms' movement activity. So a possibility to cause disorders in plant nematodes' locomotion can be a way to contain the nematode infection of the agricultural plant hosts. The materials of the study were 2nd stage larvae of root knot nematodes Meloidogyne incognita, M. minor and M. graminicola from the genus Meloidogyne Goldi, 1982. Methods of the study were immunological, immunocytochemical, as well as the modern molecular methods including genes knockout by RNA interference. The fact that expression of flp genes coding FMRF-like neuropeptides had been found in various structures of nervous systems of a range of root knot nematodes' species together with the presence of these genes' homologues in other plant nematodes species, as well as in parasitizing nematodes of vertebrates and free-living ones, shows a conservatism of peptidergic nervous system in the whole of type Nematoda. The data in the review can be used for development of new anthelmintic drugs to decrease of nematode infection of the host plants. Currently studies on this thematic are not conducted in Russia.