Describing the role of Drosophila melanogaster ABC transporters in insecticide biology using CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts.

ABC transporters have a well-established role in drug resistance, effluxing xenobiotics from cells and tissues within the organism. More recently, research has been dedicated to understanding the role insect ABC transporters play in insecticide toxicity, but progress in understanding the contribution of specific transporters has been hampered by the lack of functional genetic tools. Here, we report knockouts of three Drosophila melanogaster ABC transporter genes, Mdr49, Mdr50, and Mdr65, that are homologous to the well-studied mammalian ABCB1 (P-glycoprotein). Each knockout mutant was created in the same wild type background and tested against a panel of insecticides representing different chemical classes. Mdr65 knockouts were more susceptible to all neuroactive insecticides tested, but Mdr49 and Mdr50 knockouts showed increased susceptibility or resistance depending on the insecticide used. Mdr65 was chosen for further analysis. Calculation of LC50 values for the Mdr65 knockout allowed the substrate specificity of this transporter to be examined. No obvious distinguishing structural features were shared among MDR65 substrates. A role for Mdr65 in insecticide transport was confirmed by testing the capacity of the knockout to synergize with the ABC inhibitor verapamil and by measuring the levels of insecticide retained in the body of knockout flies. These data unambiguously establish the influence of ABC transporters on the capacity of wild type D. melanogaster to tolerate insecticide exposure and suggest that both tissue and substrate specificity underpin this capacity.

Recombinant expression and characterization of Lucilia cuprina CYP6G3: Activity and binding properties toward multiple pesticides.

The Australian sheep blowfly, Lucilia cuprina, is a primary cause of sheep flystrike and a major agricultural pest. Cytochrome P450 enzymes have been implicated in the resistance of L. cuprina to several classes of insecticides. In particular, CYP6G3 is a L. cuprina homologue of Drosophila melanogaster CYP6G1, a P450 known to confer multi-pesticide resistance. To investigate the basis of resistance, a bicistronic Escherichia coli expression system was developed to co-express active L. cuprina CYP6G3 and house fly (Musca domestica) P450 reductase. Recombinant CYP6G3 showed activity towards the high-throughput screening substrates, 7-ethoxycoumarin and p-nitroanisole, but not towards p-nitrophenol, coumarin, 7-benzyloxyresorufin, or seven different luciferin derivatives (P450-Glo™ substrates). The addition of house fly cytochrome b5 enhanced the kcat for p-nitroanisole dealkylation approximately two fold (17.8 ± 0.5 vs 9.6 ± 0.2 min-1) with little effect on KM (13 ± 1 vs 10 ± 1 µM). Inhibition studies and difference spectroscopy revealed that the organochlorine compounds, DDT and endosulfan, and the organophosphate pesticides, malathion and chlorfenvinphos, bind to the active site of CYP6G3. All four pesticides showed type I binding spectra with spectral dissociation constants in the micromolar range suggesting that they may be substrates of CYP6G3. While no significant inhibition was seen with the organophosphate, diazinon, or the neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, diazinon showed weak binding in spectral assays, with a Kd value of 23 ± 3 µM CYP6G3 metabolised diazinon to the diazoxon and hydroxydiazinon metabolites and imidacloprid to the 5-hydroxy and olefin metabolites, consistent with a proposed role of CYP6G enzymes in metabolism of phosphorothioate and neonicotinoid insecticides in other species.

Multiple P450s and Variation in Neuronal Genes Underpins the Response to the Insecticide Imidacloprid in a Population of Drosophila melanogaster.

Insecticide resistance is an economically important example of evolution in response to intense selection pressure. Here, the genetics of resistance to the neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid is explored using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel, a collection of inbred Drosophila melanogaster genotypes derived from a single population in North Carolina. Imidacloprid resistance varied substantially among genotypes, and more resistant genotypes tended to show increased capacity to metabolize and excrete imidacloprid. Variation in resistance level was then associated with genomic and transcriptomic variation, implicating several candidate genes involved in central nervous system function and the cytochrome P450s Cyp6g1 and Cyp6g2. CRISPR-Cas9 mediated removal of Cyp6g1 suggested that it contributed to imidacloprid resistance only in backgrounds where it was already highly expressed. Cyp6g2, previously implicated in juvenile hormone synthesis via expression in the ring gland, was shown to be expressed in metabolically relevant tissues of resistant genotypes. Cyp6g2 overexpression was shown to both metabolize imidacloprid and confer resistance. These data collectively suggest that imidacloprid resistance is influenced by a variety of previously known and unknown genetic factors.

Partitioning the roles of CYP6G1 and gut microbes in the metabolism of the insecticide imidacloprid in Drosophila melanogaster.

Resistance to insecticides through enhanced metabolism is a worldwide problem. The Cyp6g1 gene of the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a paradigm for the study of metabolic resistance. Constitutive overexpression of this gene confers resistance to several classes of insecticides, including the neonicotinoid imidacloprid (IMI). The metabolism of IMI in this species has been previously shown to yield oxidative and nitro-reduced metabolites. While levels of the oxidative metabolites are correlated with CYP6G1 expression, nitro-reduced metabolites are not, raising the question of how these metabolites are produced. Some IMI metabolites are known to be toxic, making their fate within the insect a second question of interest. These questions have been addressed by coupling the genetic tools of gene overexpression and CRISPR gene knock-out with the mass spectrometric technique, the Twin-Ion Method (TIM). Analysing axenic larvae indicated that microbes living within D. melanogaster are largely responsible for the production of the nitro-reduced metabolites. Knock-out of Cyp6g1 revealed functional redundancy, with some metabolites produced by CYP6G1 still detected. IMI metabolism was shown to produce toxic products that are not further metabolized but readily excreted, even when produced in the Central Nervous System (CNS), highlighting the significance of transport and excretion in metabolic resistance.

Structure of olefin-imidacloprid and gas-phase fragmentation chemistry of its protonated form.

One of the major insect metabolites of the widely used neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid, 1 (1-[(6-chloro-3-pyridinyl)methyl]-N-nitro-1H-imidazol-2-amine), is the olefin 2. To better understand how the structure of olefin 2 relates to the gas-phase fragmentation of its protonated form, 2H(+), X-ray crystallography, tandem mass spectrometry experiments and DFT calculations were carried out. Olefin 2 was found to be in a tautomeric form where the proton is on the N(1) position of the imidazole ring and forms a hydrogen bond to one of the oxygen atoms of the coplanar nitroamine group. Under conditions of low-energy collision-induced dissociation (CID) in a linear ion trap, 2H(+), formed via electrospray ionization (ESI), fragments via a major loss of water, together with minor competing losses of HNO2 and NO2•.This contrasts with 1H+, which mainly undergoes bond homolysis via NO2• loss. Thus, installation of the double bond in 2 plays a key role in facilitating the loss of water. DFT calculations, carried out using the B3LYP/6-311G++(d,p) level of theory, revealed that loss of water was energetically more favourable compared to HNO2 and NO2• loss. Three multistep, energetically accessible mechanisms were identified for loss of water from 2H(+), and these have the following barriers: (I) direct proton transfer from N(5) of the pyridine to O(1) on the NO2 group (119 kJ mol(-1)); (II) rotation of the N(2)-N(4) bond (117 kJ mol(-1)); (III) 1,3-intramolecular proton transfer between the two oxygen atoms of the NO2 group (145 kJ mol(-1)). Given that the lowest barrier for the losses of HNO2 and NO2• is 156 kJ mol(-1), it is likely that all three water loss mechanisms occur concurrently.