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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Physiol.
Sec. Invertebrate Physiology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphys.2025.1586738
Molecular Characterization of a Minus-C Odorant-Binding Protein from Cyrtotrachelus buqueti (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)
Provisionally accepted- College of Forestry, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
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Odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) are important for insects to discriminate, bind and transport odorants, such as pheromones and host plant volatiles. Herein, the Minus-C OBP (CbuqOBP1) was characterized from Cyrtotrachelus buqueti, one of the most important pests in bamboo plantations. CbuqOBP1 showed significantly higher transcription levels in the adult stage and was most highly expressed in the head of both sexes, the thorax and antenna of the male, indicating that it plays important roles in chemosensory behavior of adults and may also function in other biological processes. Fluorescence competitive binding assays showed that CbuqOBP1 displayed broad binding capabilities and strong affinities to phenol (Ki = 10.49 μM) and benzothiazole (Ki = 11.11 μM) among 8 C. buqueti volatiles. CbuqOBP1 also showed high binding affinity to the main volatile of the host plant Neosinocalamus affinis (linalool, Ki = 13.41 μM). The docking results indicated that hydrophobic interactions were the prevailing forces between CbuqOBP1 with these three ligands. Additionally, several amino acid residues were significantly overlapped and contributed to the interactions with the ligands. The combined results suggest that CbuqOBP1 may play dual roles in binding volatile compounds from the host plant and the same species and will be helpful to developing new pest-control strategies.
Keywords: Cyrtotrachelus buqueti, olfactory, Expression pattern, protein expression, Competitive binding assay, molecular docking
Received: 03 Mar 2025; Accepted: 08 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Li, Yang, Wang and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hua Yang, College of Forestry, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.