Frontiers in Physiology (Sep 2022)

Metabolization and sequestration of plant specialized metabolites in insect herbivores: Current and emerging approaches

  • Adriana Moriguchi Jeckel,
  • Franziska Beran,
  • Tobias Züst,
  • Gordon Younkin,
  • Gordon Younkin,
  • Georg Petschenka,
  • Prayan Pokharel,
  • Domenic Dreisbach,
  • Stephanie Christine Ganal-Vonarburg,
  • Stephanie Christine Ganal-Vonarburg,
  • Christelle Aurélie Maud Robert

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2022.1001032
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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Herbivorous insects encounter diverse plant specialized metabolites (PSMs) in their diet, that have deterrent, anti-nutritional, or toxic properties. Understanding how they cope with PSMs is crucial to understand their biology, population dynamics, and evolution. This review summarizes current and emerging cutting-edge methods that can be used to characterize the metabolic fate of PSMs, from ingestion to excretion or sequestration. It further emphasizes a workflow that enables not only to study PSM metabolism at different scales, but also to tackle and validate the genetic and biochemical mechanisms involved in PSM resistance by herbivores. This review thus aims at facilitating research on PSM-mediated plant-herbivore interactions.

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