The membranotropic behavior of semiochemicals, posible implications in this way of actions

RODRIGUEZ, SA; PINTO, O.A.; HOLLMANN, A

La Plata

Congreso; XLVII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Biofisica; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Biofísica

Insects play an important role in agriculture and human health. Insect communication is mainly based on chemosensation due to the small body size of insects, which limits their ability to produce or perceive auditory and visual signals, 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 -pinene, benzaldehyde, eugenol, and grandlure, among others, with a DPPC lipid membrane model using surface pressure experiments and Monte Carlo computational analysis. The results obtained allowed to confirm, that these semiochemicals are able to interact with model lipids membranes. Furthermore, Monte Carlo analysis strongly suggests that semiochemicals after the interaction with the membrane are grouped in clusters that implied a high concentration of drug in restricted spatial domains of the membrane. Overall, the obtained results allowed us to propose and discuss a plausible membranotropic mechanism of interaction between semiochemicals and insect neural membrane.