Partial characterization and HPLC isolation of bacteria-produced attractants for the Mexican fruit fly,Anastrepha...

Methods were developed to collect and isolate volatile chemicals produced by aStaphylococcus bacterium in tryptic soy culture that are attractive to protein-hungry adult Mexican fruit flies. Centrifugation of bacteria culture yielded a slightly attractive pellet containing most of the bacteria cells and a highly attractive supernatant. Supernatant filtered to remove the remaining bacteria was as attractive as the unfiltered supernatant. Filtrate at pH 7 and above was much more attractive than filtrate at pH 5 and below. Most of the attractiveness was retained on strong cation exchange media under acidic conditions and eluted with base. Attractive principles could not be trapped on adsorbents such as Porapak Q or extracted with organic solvents from aqueous preparations, but they were easily collected by headspace sweeping with steam. The attractive components were efficiently concentrated by rotary evaporation of steam distillate at pH 5, but at higher pH much of the attractiveness distilled. A reverse-phase HPLC method using a negative counter-ion was developed to separate and collect attractive components of concentrated steam distillate. Attractive fractions collected using this method were concentrated and injected onto silica HPLC. Activity eluted from silica in two distinct bands. Results suggest that the most attractive components of the bacterial odor are highly polar, low-molecular-weight amines.