Cloning, expression and chitin-binding activity of two peritrophin-like protein genes in the common cutworm,...

Insect midgut secretes a semi-permeable peritrophic membrane (PM), which plays important roles in protecting the midgut and helping with food digestion. The lepidopteran larvae produce type 1 PM, which is degraded when insects develop into the metamorphic stages. However, the underlying mechanism is unclear. In the present study, two peritrophin-like proteins (peritrophin-57 and 37) were identified from the midgut expression sequence tag library and transcriptome of the common cutworm, Spodoptera litura. The temporal and spatial expression patterns and responses to the induction of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) and starvation were examined by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction according to their common sequence region. The chitin-binding activity was also studied using a competitor, calcofluor. The open reading frames are 1 554 and 1 020 bp, respectively. They shared four highly conserved peritrophin-A domains and were expressed only in the midgut rather than in the other tissues, including fat body, epidermis, Malpighian tube and hemolymph. Their transcriptional expression could only be detected at the larval stages rather than in eggs, prepupae, pupae and adults. The purified protein of peritrophin-37 bound to chitin in a dose-dependent manner. These results indicate that the two proteins are peritrophins, the structural components of PM. In addition, the messenger RNA levels of the two peritrophins were significantly down-regulated by 20E injection, whereas feeding/starvation had no effect on the expression. These findings suggest that the increase of 20E titer may be an important factor which controls the degradation of PM during metamorphosis.