CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Many insects affect food production and human health, and in an attempt to control these insects the use of synthetic insecticides has become widespread. However, this has resulted in the development of resistance in these organisms, human diseases, contamination of food, and pollution of the environment. Plants produce a diversity of compounds and use them in their interactions with surrounding organisms. These natural products and essential oil components such as terpenes and phenylpropenes have been shown to have a significant potential for insect control. However, the molecular properties related to their insecticidal activity are not well understood. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the toxicity of terpene compounds against three insects of importance to human health, namely, lice, cockroaches and triatominae bugs (vector of Chagas disease), and to evaluate which molecular descriptors are important in the bioactivity of terpenes. For the different insects studied, quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies were performed in order to predict the insecticidal activity of terpene compounds. The obtained QSAR models indicated that the activity of these compounds depends on their ability to reach the targets and also depends on their ability to interact with these targets.The mathematical expressions obtained by the QSAR analysis can be used to predict the bioactivities of other structurally related molecules. Our findings may provide an important contribution in the search for new compounds with insecticidal activityKEYWORDS: QSAR, terpenes, phenylpropenes, lice, cockroach, Triatominae bugs, acetylcholinesterase, octopaminergic sites, GABA, tyramine receptor

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