Browsing by Person "Zimmer, Christoph Thomas"

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Monitoring, mechanisms and management of insecticide resistance and insecticide mode of action in coleopteran pests of winter oilseed rape with special reference to neonicotinoid insecticides under laboratory and applied aspects
(2014) Zimmer, Christoph Thomas; Zebitz, Claus P. W.
Winter oilseed rape, Brassica napus L., has become a vital part of cereal-based crop rotations in Europe. It is attacked by numerous insect pests and their control relies on the intensive use of insecticides (compared to other broad acre crops). The exclusive and continuous use of pyrethroid insecticides for almost twenty years led to an enormous selection pressure and facilitated the development of resistance in oilseed rape pests in Europe. Unsurprising three out of the five major pests of the order Coleoptera are reported to be pyrethroid resistant at present: the pollen beetle, Meligethes aeneus F.; the cabbage stem flea beetle, Psylliodes chrysocephala L. and the cabbage seed weevil, Ceutorhynchus assimilis PAYK.. An adult vial bioassay, which is based on insecticide coated glass vials, was used to monitor the spread and strength of pyrethroid resistance and to determine cross-resistance pattern in pollen beetle and cabbage stem flea beetle. Furthermore, baseline susceptibility towards lambda-cyhalothrin (a widely used pyrethroid) was also established for the cabbage seed weevil. The vial bioassay methodology was adapted to thiacloprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide, to determine baseline susceptibility and to provide a methodology to allow long-term susceptibility monitoring of pollen beetle and cabbage seed weevil. Thiacloprid monitoring revealed that pollen beetle and cabbage seed weevil populations collected across Europe in 2009-2012 and 2012 respectively were highly susceptible to this insecticide class. Metabolism studies using native microsomal preparations as the enzyme source and deltamethrin as substrate revealed metabolism of deltamethrin with 4-OH-deltamethrin being the major metabolite. Metabolite formation in vitro was correlated with the observed pyrethroid resistance level in vivo and was suppressible by PBO. A degenerate PCR approach was used to identify partial P450 gene sequences from pollen beetle. qRT-PCR screening covering a range of pollen beetle populations differing in levels of pyrethroid resistance identified a single P450, CYP6BQ23, as significantly and highly overexpressed (up to ~900-fold) in resistant strains compared to susceptible strains. The expression of CYP6BQ23 was significantly correlated with both the level of resistance and with the rate of deltamethrin metabolism in microsomal preparations of these populations. Recombinant expression of this P450 in an insect cell line demonstrated that it is capable of hydroxylating deltamethrin and tau-fluvalinate. The turnover of these pyrethroids by CYP6BQ23 is in line with the observed moderate cross-resistant phenotype. Molecular modeling suggested a better fit of deltamethrin into the active site of CYP6BQ23 compared to tau-fluvalinate also supporting the biochemical results. The occurrence of target-site resistance was investigated by single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis of the para-locus encoding the voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) in insects. To achieve this goal a partial fragment (domain IIS4-6) encoding an important region of the pyrethroid binding site was PCR amplified and screened for non-synonymous SNPs. One SNP was identified causing a leucine to phenylalanine substitution at amino acid residue number 1014 (Musca domestica L. numbering), well known as knock down resistance (kdr) conferring an absolute cross-resistance to pyrethroids and DDT in various insect species. Sequencing of the very same gene region in the cabbage stem flea beetle also revealed the presence of the L1014F kdr mutation in pyrethroid resistant flea beetle populations, thus explaining the strong cross-resistance pattern observed in vitro. Most mechanistic studies of resistance have focused on elucidating the contribution of particular genes/gene families to pyrethroid resistance. To generate a comprehensive sequence resource and to elucidate global changes in gene regulation related to insecticide resistance in pollen beetle a de novo transcriptome was assembled from sequence pools generated by next-generation sequencing. RNA-sequencing of three pyrethroid resistant and one highly susceptible reference population allowed a global gene expression analysis by short read mapping against the generated transcriptome, as well as a SNP analysis. The implications of these results for resistance management in coleopteran pests in winter oilseed rape and opportunities for future work are discussed.