Silkworm sex pheromone identified

New research just announced by a team of leading scientists working with the UK’s national Synchrotron, Diamond Light Source could have a significant impact on the development and refinement of new eco-friendly pest control methods for worldwide agriculture.

The importance of understanding how insects ‘smell’ and how the chemical signals are recognised is useful for many things, but especially for pest control in agriculture. Determining the composition and processes behind the olfactory functions of insects feed directly in to the development and refinement of new pathways to influence insect host locating behaviours. Plants use chemical signals to repel and attract insects and by harnessing a detailed understanding of the signals, farmers can plant companion species to create ‘odours’ that would make an area very unattractive or attractive to insects according to what they require. This is more commonly known as the push-pull system.

Published in the Journal of Molecular Biology, the study was carried out by Dr Jing-Jiang Zhou and colleagues at the world’s oldest agricultural research centre and the largest UK facility, Rothamsted Research, in collaboration with Prof. Nick Keep's group from the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at Birkbeck, University of London.

Dr Zhou, senior research scientist in insect molecular biology at Rothamsted Research, studies insect olfaction and chemical ecology at the molecular level, explains: “Using Diamon Light Source’s intense X-rays, we unravelled the detailed mechanisms linked to pheromone detection which dictates mating behaviour in silkworm moths. They are a model organism and any new insights into the working of their olfactory system has repercussions on our global understanding how insects locate mates and their hosts.”

Solving this protein structure represents a significant achievement in the advance of structural biology in the UK. and it marks the 100th new structure identified at Diamond since its opening in 2007. Apparently studying proteins and the role they play within organisms is like having a 100 locks and keys in front of you and not having any idea as to what fits what. By solving the structure of these proteins, we understand more about their function and matching them becomes much easier.

Dr Zhou says: “It’s not just the farming community which stands to benefit from this work. These new insights will be fed into the development and refinement of biosensors where detection sensitivity is paramount in areas like blood tests. One of our spin-off companies are also investigating how bees can detect some small quantities of explosives and stand to benefit from any knowledge we generate.”

More information: www.diamond.ak.uk