Plant Defensive β-Glucosidases Resist Digestion and Sustain Activity in the Gut of a Lepidopteran Herbivore.

ABSTRACT: Two-component activated chemical defenses are a major part of many plants' strategies to disrupt herbivory. The activation step is often the β-glucosidase-catalyzed removal of a glucose moiety from a pro-toxin, leading to an unstable and toxic aglycone. While some β-glucosidases have been well studied, several aspects of their roles in vivo, such as their precise sites of enzymatic activity during and after ingestion, and the importance of particular isoforms in plant defense are still not fully understood. Here, plant defensive β-glucosidases from maize, white mustard and almonds were shown to resist digestion by larvae of the generalist lepidopteran Spodoptera littoralis, and the majority of the ingested activities toward both general and plant pro-toxic substrates was reco

SUBMITTER: Vassao DG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6186830 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature