Insect Chitinase: Molecular Biology and the Potential Roles in Insect Pest Management
Publication Date: 23/01/2021
Author(s): Natasha Isabel Tanatsiwa Mbiza, Wanzu Feng, Pengliang Xia, Haoran Zhang, Zongwei Hu, Qian Chen, Man Zeng, Yi Zhang, Yazhen Yang, Chuanren Li, Jianmin Zhang.
Volume/Issue: Volume 4 , Issue 1 (2021)
Abstract:
Insect chitinase and chitinase-like proteins play a significant regulatory role in degrading chitin in the exoskeletal and gut linings of insects. For several years, researches on insect chitinase have been carried out on their development as biopesticides or chemical defence proteins in transgenic plants. Targeting chitin degraded by insect chitinases may be an effective approach in integrated pest management programs because they are harmless for the plants and vertebrates, which do not have chitin in their tissues. The ability of chitinases to digest chitin in the peritrophic matrix or exoskeleton raises the possibility to use them as an insect pest control strategy. New technologies were continually applied for the studies on the structure, time and space expression, tissue specific expression and biological function of insect chitinases with the rapid development of molecular biology, and many innovative achievements were reached. The research advances of insect chitinases were reviewed in the paper.
Keywords:
Insect Chitinases, Molecular biology, Diversity, Functions, Pest Control
