Developments in Fatty Acid-Derived Insect Pheromone Production Using Engineered Yeasts

The use of traditional chemical insecticides for pest control often leads to environmental pollution and a decrease in biodiversity. Recently, insect sex pheromones were applied for sustainable biocontrol of pests in fields, due to their limited adverse impacts on biodiversity and food safety compared to that of other conventional insecticides. However, the structures of insect pheromones are complex, and their chemical synthesis is not commercially feasible. As yeasts have been widely used for fatty acid-derived pheromone production in the past few years, using engineered yeasts may be promising and sustainable for the low-cost production of fatty acid-derived pheromones. The primary fatty acids produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other yeasts are C16 and C18, and it is also possible to rewire/reprogram the metabolic flux for other fatty acids or fatty acid derivatives. This review summarizes the fatty acid biosynthetic pathway in S. cerevisiae and recent progress in yeast engineering in terms of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology strategies to produce insect pheromones. In the future, insect pheromones produced by yeasts might provide an eco-friendly pest control method in agricultural fields.

Making Plants Smell Like Moths: Nicotiana benthamiana release moth pheromone alcohol, aldehyde and acetate upon transient expression of biosynthetic genes of different origin

Using genetically modified plants as natural dispensers of insect pheromones may eventually become part of a novel strategy for integrated pest management. In the present study, we first characterized essential functional genes for sex pheromone biosynthesis in the rice stem borer Chilo suppressalis (Walker) by heterologous expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Nicotiana benthamiana, including two desaturase genes CsupYPAQ and CsupKPSE, and a reductase gene CsupFAR2. Subsequently, we co-expressed CsupYPAQ and CsupFAR2 together with the previously characterized moth desaturase AtrΔ11 in N. benthamiana. This resulted in the production of (Z)-11-hexadecenol together with (Z)-11-hexadecenal, the major pheromone component of C. suppressalis. Both compounds were collected from the transformed N. benthamiana headspace volatiles using solid phase microextraction. We finally added the expression of a yeast acetyltransferase gene ATF1 and could then confirm also (Z)-11-hexadecenyl acetate release from the plant. Our results pave the way for stable transformation of plants to be used as biological pheromone sources in different pest control strategies.

From Insect Pheromones to Mating Disruption: Theory and Practice

Insects perceive and integrate a hierarchy of visual, chemical and tactile cues for feeding and reproductive purposes, as well as for predator and parasitoid avoidance [...]

Latest Developments in Insect Sex Pheromone Research and Its Application in Agricultural Pest Management

Since the first identification of the silkworm moth sex pheromone in 1959, significant research has been reported on identifying and unravelling the sex pheromone mechanisms of hundreds of insect species. In the past two decades, the number of research studies on new insect pheromones, pheromone biosynthesis, mode of action, peripheral olfactory and neural mechanisms, and their practical applications in Integrated Pest Management has increased dramatically. An interdisciplinary approach that uses the advances and new techniques in analytical chemistry, chemical ecology, neurophysiology, genetics, and evolutionary and molecular biology has helped us to better understand the pheromone perception mechanisms and its practical application in agricultural pest management. In this review, we present the most recent developments in pheromone research and its application in the past two decades.

Pheromones and 25 years of pheromonotherapy: what are they and how do they work?

The capacity of animals to communicate via pheromones is long established and, for generations, pheromones have been unwittingly used by man to manage the behaviour of animals in agriculture — using the chemicals produced by an individual member of a species to alter the behaviour of another member of that species. More recently, insect pheromones have been used in managing insect infestations of crops. However, approximately 25 years ago the French veterinary surgeon, Patrick Pageat, began to investigate the production of pheromones in both farm and companion animals and how synthetic analogues of pheromones could be used to improve animal welfare, creating a new field in veterinary medicine — pheromonotherapy. This article aims to summarise the main developments in pheromonotherapy over the last 25 years.

Enantioselective Sensing of Insect Pheromones in Water

An arrayed combination of water-soluble deep cavitands and cationic dyes has been shown to optically sense insect pheromones at micromolar concentration in water. Machine learning approaches were used to optimize...