The membranotropic behavior of semiochemicals, possible implications in this way of actions.

SERGIO ANTONIO RODRÍGUEZ; O.A. PINTO; AXEL HOLLMANN

La Plata

Simposio; XLVII Reunión anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica; 2018

Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de La Plata

Insects play an important role in agriculture and human health. Insectcommunication is mainly based on chemosensation due to the small body size ofinsects, which limits their ability to produce or perceive auditory and visualsignals, especially over large distances. In this context, unraveling the chemical language of insects has been the subject of intense research in the field of chemical ecology for the past five decades. Chemicals involved in insect communication, called semiochemicals, are volatiles or semi-volatiles compounds that allow to insects to find a mate, besides the oviposition site in reproduction and food sources. Actually, insect olfaction mechanism is subject to study, but systematic analyses of the role of neural membranes are scarce. In the present work, we evaluated the interactions of a-pinene, benzaldehyde, eugenol, and grandlure, among others, with a DPPC lipid membrane model using surface pressure experiments and Monte Carlo computational analysis. The resultsobtained allowed to confirm, that these semiochemicals are able to interact withmodel lipids membranes. Furthermore, Monte Carlo analysis strongly suggests thatsemiochemicals after the interaction with the membrane are grouped in clustersthat implied a high concentration of drug in restricted spatial domains of themembrane. Overall, the obtained results allowed us to propose and discuss aplausible membranotropic mechanism of interaction between semiochemicals andinsect neural membrane.