Odorant Binding Protein C17 Contributes to the Response to Artemisia vulgaris Oil in Tribolium castaneum.

Kun-Peng Zhang,Yong-Lei Zhang,Shan-Shan Gao,Jing-Shun Wang,Rui-Min Li,Yuan-Chen Zhang,Shuang Xue

doi:10.3389/ftox.2021.627470

Kun-Peng Zhang, Yong-Lei Zhang + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/ftox.2021.627470

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Abstract

The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (T. castaneum), generates great financial losses to the grain storage and food processing industries. Previous studies have shown that essential oil (EO) from Artemisia vulgaris (A. vulgaris) has strong contact toxicity to larvae of the beetle, and odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) contribute to the defense of larvae against A. vulgaris. However, the functions of OBPs in insects defending against plant oil is still not clear. Here, expression of one OBP gene, TcOBPC17, was significantly induced 12–72 h after EO exposure. Furthermore, compared to the control group, RNA interference (RNAi) against TcOBPC17 resulted in a higher mortality rate after EO treatment, which suggests that TcOBPC17 involves in the defense against EO and induces a declining sensitivity to EO. In addition, the tissue expression profile analysis revealed that the expression of TcOBPC17 was more abundant in the metabolic detoxification organs of the head, fat body, epidermis, and hemolymph than in other larval tissue. The expression profile of developmental stages showed that TcOBPC17 had a higher level in early and late adult stages than in other developmental stages. Taken together, these results suggest that TcOBPC17 could participate in the sequestration process of exogenous toxicants in T. castaneum larvae.

Highlights

Insects have sensitive olfactory systems to recognize and receive various odor molecules in their surrounding environments
After downloading the odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) sequences reported in other insects, we constructed a phylogenetic tree of the TcOBPC17 protein (Supplementary Figure 2)
TcOBPC17 was well-clustered with 19 other OBP proteins, which suggests that TcOBPC17 may perform similar functions as other OBPs

Summary

Introduction

Insects have sensitive olfactory systems to recognize and receive various odor molecules in their surrounding environments. Odor chemical substances bind with specific proteins in the sensory lymph, which transport them to odorant receptors, eventually triggering a series of stress responses (Pelosi et al, 2006; Leal, 2013). These specific proteins that binding with odor molecules include chemosensory proteins (CSPs) and odorant-binding proteins (OBPs). The OBPs of insects are highly soluble and globular proteins, which would secrete abundantly in the sensory lymph once odors appear (Sun et al, 2018). They generally locate in the antenna, mouth, and other

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