Insects, Journal Year: 2025, Volume and Issue: 16(4), P. 421 - 421

Published: April 17, 2025

The red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, is a destructive, invasive pest to diverse range of plantations globally. Commonly used broad-range chemical insecticides for insect control pose high risks non-target organisms, humans, and the environment. A bio-rational approach screening natural small-molecule inhibitors that specifically target R. ferrugineus proteins critical its life processes can pave way developing novel bioinsecticides. Digestive enzymes (DEs), which impair feeding on plants (herbivory), are promising targets. We generated de novo transcriptomes, annotated DE-related genes from gut abdomen, manually DE gene family recently available genome our transcriptome data, reported 34 glycosidases, 85 lipases, 201 proteases. identified several tandem duplicates allelic variants lipase protease families, notably, 10 RferLip 21 RferPro alleles, emerged primarily through indels single-site substitution. These alleles may confer enhanced digestive lipolysis proteolysis. Phylogenetic analyses classified different subfamilies DEs revealed close evolutionary relationships with other coleopterans. assessed select candidate DEs’ activity potential inhibition in silico better understand herbivory arsenal. In analysis selected exhibited similar ligand-binding affinity their corresponding substrate, except aminopeptidase N, RferPro40, poorer inhibitor bestatin. Overall, study serves as foundation further functional offers development insecticide ferrugineus.

Language: Английский