INTERACTION OF SEMIOCHEMICALS WITH MODEL LIPID MEMBRANES: A BIOPHYSICAL APPROACH

S. A. RODRIGUEZ*; O.A. PINTO*; AXEL HOLLMANN*

COLLOIDS AND SURFACES B-BIOINTERFACES

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2017 vol. 161 p. 413 - 419

0927-7765

Unravelling the chemical language of insects has been the subject of intenseresearch in the field of chemical ecology for the past five decades. Insectcommunication is mainly based on chemosensation due to the small body size ofinsects, which limits their ability to produce or perceive auditory and visual signals,especially over large distances. Chemicals involved in insect communication arecalled semiochemicals. These volatiles and semivolatiles compounds allow toInsects to find a mate, besides the oviposition site in reproduction and foodsources. Actually, insect olfaction mechanism is subject to study, but systematicanalyses of the role of neural membranes are scarce. In the present work were evaluates the interaction of different semiochemicals as -pinene, benzaldehyde,eugenol, grandlure, among others, with a lipid membrane model using surfacepressure experiments and Monte Carlo computational analysis, allowed to proposea plausible membranotropic mechanism of interaction between semiochemicalsand insect neural membrane.