Athetis lepigone is a polyphagous pest found around the world that feeds on maize, wheat, and various other important crops. Although it exhibits a degree of resistance to various chemical insecticides, an effective pest-control method has not yet been developed. The sex pheromone communication system plays an essential role in the mating and reproduction of moths, in which pheromone-binding proteins (PBPs) are crucial genes. In this study, we cloned and purified the protein AlepPBP1 using an E. coli expression system and found it had a higher binding affinity to two sex pheromones of A. lepigone, namely, Z7-12:Ac and Z9-14:Ac (with Ki 0.77 ± 0.10 and 1.10 ± 0.20 μM, respectively), than to other plant volatiles. The binding-mode analysis of protein conformation with equilibrium stabilization was obtained using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and indicated that hydrophobic interactions involving several nonpolar residues were the main driving force for the binding affinity of AlepPBP1 with sex pheromones. Computational alanine scanning (CAS) was performed to further identify key amino acid residues and validate their binding contributions. Each key residue, including Phe36, Trp37, Val52, and Phe118, was subsequently mutated into alanine using site-directed mutagenesis. Binding assays showed that the efficient binding abilities to Z7-12:Ac (F36A, W37A, and F118A) and Z9-14:Ac (F36A, W37A, V52A, and F118A) were almost lost in the mutated proteins. Our results demonstrated that these key amino acid residues are crucial for determining the binding ability of AlepPBP1 to sex pheromones. These findings provide a basis for the use of AlepPBP1 in the studies as a specific target for the development of novel behavioral antagonists with marked inhibition or mating-disruption abilities using computer-aided drug design (CADD).
Keywords: Athetis lepigone; computational simulation; fluorescence-binding assay; pheromone-binding protein; sex pheromone; site-directed mutagenesis.