Metabolization and sequestration of plant specialized metabolites in insect herbivores: Current and emerging approaches

Adriana Moriguchi Jeckel; Franziska Beran; Tobias Züst; Gordon Younkin; Georg Petschenka; Prayan Pokharel; Domenic Dreisbach; Stephanie Christine Ganal-Vonarburg; Christelle Aurélie Maud Robert

doi:10.3389/fphys.2022.1001032

Metabolization and sequestration of plant specialized metabolites in insect herbivores: Current and emerging approaches

Front Physiol. 2022 Sep 27:13:1001032. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2022.1001032. eCollection 2022.

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Chemical Ecology, Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
² Department of Insect Symbiosis, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany.
³ Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴ Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY, United States.
⁵ Plant Biology Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States.
⁶ Department of Applied Entomology, Institute of Phytomedicine, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany.
⁷ Institute for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
⁸ Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
⁹ Department for BioMedical Research, Visceral Surgery and Medicine, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.

Abstract

Herbivorous insects encounter diverse plant specialized metabolites (PSMs) in their diet, that have deterrent, anti-nutritional, or toxic properties. Understanding how they cope with PSMs is crucial to understand their biology, population dynamics, and evolution. This review summarizes current and emerging cutting-edge methods that can be used to characterize the metabolic fate of PSMs, from ingestion to excretion or sequestration. It further emphasizes a workflow that enables not only to study PSM metabolism at different scales, but also to tackle and validate the genetic and biochemical mechanisms involved in PSM resistance by herbivores. This review thus aims at facilitating research on PSM-mediated plant-herbivore interactions.

Keywords: -omics; detoxification; herbivory; plant specialized metabolites; resistance; sequestration; tolerance.

Publication types

Review