An overall look at insect chitin deacetylases: Promising molecular targets for developing green pesticides

Yingchen Li; Lin Liu; Jun Yang; Qing Yang

doi:10.1584/jpestics.D20-085

An overall look at insect chitin deacetylases: Promising molecular targets for developing green pesticides

J Pestic Sci. 2021 Feb 20;46(1):43-52. doi: 10.1584/jpestics.D20-085.

Authors

Yingchen Li¹, Lin Liu¹, Jun Yang¹, Qing Yang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Bioengineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning 116024, China.
² State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection and Shenzhen Agricultural Genome Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.

Abstract

Chitin deacetylase (CDA) is a key enzyme involved in the modification of chitin and plays critical roles in molting and pupation, which catalyzes the removal of acetyl groups from N-acetyl-D-glucosamine residues in chitin to form chitosan and release acetic acid. Defects in the CDA genes or their expression may lead to stunted insect development and even death. Therefore, CDA can be used as a potential pest control target. However, there are no effective pesticides known to target CDA. Although there has been some exciting research progress on bacterial or fungal CDAs, insect CDA characteristics are less understood. This review summarizes the current understanding of insect CDAs, especially very recent advances in our understanding of crystal structures and the catalytic mechanism. Progress in developing small-molecule CDA inhibitors is also summarized. We hope the information included in this review will help facilitate new pesticide development through a novel action mode, such as targeting CDA.

Keywords: chitin deacetylases; inhibitor; insect; structure.

© Pesticide Science Society of Japan 2021. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).