2. Academic Validation
  3. Lynamicin B is a Potential Pesticide by Acting as a Lepidoptera-Exclusive Chitinase Inhibitor

Lynamicin B is a Potential Pesticide by Acting as a Lepidoptera-Exclusive Chitinase Inhibitor

  • J Agric Food Chem. 2021 Dec 1;69(47):14086-14091. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.1c05385.
Qiong Lu 1,  Liping Xu 2 3,  Lin Liu 1,  Yong Zhou 4,  Tian Liu 1,  Yongxiang Song 2 5,  Jianhua Ju 2 5,  Qing Yang 1 6 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 School of Bioengineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
  • 2 CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-resources and Ecology, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Marine Materia Medica, RNAM Center for Marine Microbiology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510301, China.
  • 3 Academy of Life Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
  • 4 School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China.
  • 5 Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511458, China.
  • 6 State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.
  • 7 Shenzhen Branch, Guangdong Laboratory of Lingnan Modern Agriculture, Genome Analysis Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shenzhen 518120, China.
PMID: 34797675 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.1c05385
Abstract

Insect group h chitinase is a promising target for designing non-target safe pesticides in that it is exclusively distributed in lepidopteran insects, over 80% of which are agricultural pests. In this work, lynamicin B was discovered to be an inhibitor of OfChi-h, the group h chitinase from the lepidopteran pest Ostrinia furnacalis. Lynamicin B was revealed to competitively inhibit OfChi-h with a Ki value of 8.76 μM and does not significantly inhibit other chitinases. The co-crystal structure of lynamicin B and OfChi-h revealed that the dichloroindolyl group of lynamicin B occupies an unexplored pocket below subsites +1 and +2 of the substrate-binding cleft, which is vital for its selectivity. Feeding experiments demonstrated that lynamicin B exhibited high insecticidal activities against other lepidopteran pests Mythimna separata and Spodoptera frugiperda besides O. furnacalis. Moreover, lynamicin B did not affect Trichogramma ostriniae, a natural enemy of O. furnacalis. This study provides a natural-derived potent pesticide for the control of lepidopteran pests, leaving its natural enemy unaffected.

Keywords

chitinase; inhibitor; insecticide; integrated pest management; natural enemy.

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