| Title: | A male-specific odorant receptor conserved through the evolution of sex pheromones in Ostrinia moth species |
| Author(s): | Miura N; Nakagawa T; Tatsuki S; Touhara K; Ishikawa Y; |
| Address: | "Department of Agricultural and Environmental Biology, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan" |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1449-2288 (Electronic) 1449-2288 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "In many moths, mate-finding communication is mediated by the female sex pheromones. Since differentiation of sex pheromones is often associated with speciation, it is intriguing to know how the changes in female sex pheromone have been tracked by the pheromone recognition system of the males. A male-specific odorant receptor was found to have been conserved through the evolution of sex pheromone communication systems in the genus Ostrinia (Lepidoptera: Crambidae). In an effort to characterize pheromone receptors of O. scapulalis, which uses a mixture of (E)-11- and (Z)-11-tetradecenyl acetates as a sex pheromone, we cloned a gene (OscaOR1) encoding a male-specific odorant receptor. In addition, we cloned a gene of the Or83b family (OscaOR2). Functional assays using Xenopus oocytes co-expressing OscaOR1 and OscaOR2 have shown that OscaOR1 is, unexpectedly, a receptor of (E)-11-tetradecenol (E11-14:OH), a single pheromone component of a congener O. latipennis. Subsequent studies on O. latipennis showed that this species indeed has a gene orthologous to OscaOR1 (OlatOR1), a functional assay of which confirmed it to be a gene encoding the receptor of E11-14:OH. Furthermore, investigations of six other Ostrinia species have revealed that all of them have a gene orthologous to OscaOR1, although none of these species, except O. ovalipennis, a species most closely related to O. latipennis, uses E11-14:OH as the pheromone component. The present findings suggest that the male-specific receptor of E11-14:OH was acquired before the divergence of the genus Ostrinia, and functionally retained through the evolution of this genus" |
| Keywords: | "Amino Acid Sequence Animals *Biological Evolution Cloning, Molecular Conserved Sequence Gene Expression In Situ Hybridization Male Molecular Sequence Data Moths/genetics/*physiology Patch-Clamp Techniques Phylogeny Receptors, Pheromone/chemistry/*genetics;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineMiura, Nami Nakagawa, Tatsuro Tatsuki, Sadahiro Touhara, Kazushige Ishikawa, Yukio eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Australia 2009/05/08 Int J Biol Sci. 2009; 5(4):319-30. doi: 10.7150/ijbs.5.319. Epub 2009 Apr 29" |
