emamectin-benzoate and avermectin

An overview is given on recent work towards new avermectin derivatives of extremely high insecticidal and acaricidal activity. These compounds were prepared from commercially available abamectin (avermectin B1) 1. For the synthesis, many novel entries have been opened up, making use of modern synthetic methods and applying them, for the first time, to the chemistry of avermectins. Several types of avermectin derivatives can be regarded as key innovations in the field. These are, in particular, 4''-deoxy-4''-(S)-amino avermectins 3, 4'-O-alkoxyalkyl avermectin monosaccharides 5, 4''-deoxy-4''-C-substituted 4''-amino avermectins 6 and 2''-substituted avermectins 7. 4''-Deoxy-4''-(S)-amino avermectins 3 were obtained by the consecutive application of the Staudinger and Aza-Wittig reaction. 4'-O-Alkoxyalkyl avermectin monosaccharides 5 were prepared by alkoxyalkylation of 5-O-protected avermectin monosaccharide. For the synthesis of 4''-deoxy-4''-C-substituted 4''-amino avermectins 6, several methods were used to construct the fully substituted 4''-carbon centre, such as a modified Strecker synthesis, the addition of organometallics to a 4''-sulfinimine and a modified Ugi approach. In order to prepare 2''-substituted avermectins 7, 5-O-protected avermectin monosaccharide was coupled with carbohydrate building blocks. An alternative synthesis involved the hitherto unknown enol ether chemistry of 4''-oxo-avermectin and the conjugate addition of a cuprate to an avermectin 2'',3''-en-4''-one. In addition, a number of other highly potent derivatives were synthesised. Examples are 4''-O-amino avermectins 8, as well as products arising from intramolecular rhodium catalysed amidations and carbene insertions. A radical cyclisation led to an intriguing rearrangement of the avermectin skeleton. Many of the new avermectins surpassed the activity of abamectin 1 against insects and mites.

Topics: Crops, Agricultural; Disaccharides; Insecticides; Ivermectin; Structure-Activity Relationship

Emamectin benzoate (EB), a derivative of avermectin, is the primary insecticide used to control the fall armyworm (FAW) in China. However, the specific molecular targets of EB against FAW remain unclear. In this study, we cloned the glutamate-gated chloride channel (GluCl) gene, which is known to be a primary molecular target for avermectin. We first investigated the transcript levels of SfGluCl in FAW and found that the expression level of SfGluCl in the head and nerve cord was significantly higher than that in other tissues. Furthermore, we found that the expression level of SfGluCl was significantly higher in eggs than that in other developmental stages, including larvae, pupae, and adults. Additionally, we identified three variable splice forms of SfGluCl in exons 3 and 9 and found that their splice frequencies remained unaffected by treatment with the LC

Topics: Animals; Insecticide Resistance; Insecticides; Larva; Molecular Docking Simulation; Spodoptera

The evolution of insecticide resistance represents a global constraint to agricultural production. Because of the extreme genetic diversity found in insects and the large numbers of genes involved in insecticide detoxification, better tools are needed to quickly identify and validate the involvement of putative resistance genes for improved monitoring, management, and countering of field-evolved insecticide resistance. The avermectins, emamectin benzoate (EB) and abamectin are relatively new pesticides with reduced environmental risk that target a wide number of insect pests, including the beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua, an important global pest of many crops. Unfortunately, field resistance to avermectins recently evolved in the beet armyworm, threatening the sustainable use of this class of insecticides. Here, we report a high-quality chromosome-level assembly of the beet armyworm genome and use bulked segregant analysis (BSA) to identify the locus of avermectin resistance, which mapped on 15-16 Mbp of chromosome 17. Knockout of the CYP9A186 gene that maps within this region by CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing fully restored EB susceptibility, implicating this gene in avermectin resistance. Heterologous expression and in vitro functional assays further confirm that a natural substitution (F116V) found in the substrate recognition site 1 (SRS1) of the CYP9A186 protein results in enhanced metabolism of EB and abamectin. Hence, the combined approach of coupling gene editing with BSA allows for the rapid identification of metabolic resistance genes responsible for insecticide resistance, which is critical for effective monitoring and adaptive management of insecticide resistance.

Topics: Animals; Chromosome Mapping; Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats; Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System; Gene Editing; Genome; Insecticide Resistance; Insecticides; Ivermectin; Larva; Spodoptera

Avermectins are effective agricultural pesticides and antiparasitic agents that are widely employed in the agricultural, veterinary and medical fields. The aim of this study was to investigate the inhibitory effects of selected avermectins including abamectin, doramectin, emamectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin and moxidectin that are used as drugs against a wide variety of internal and external mammalian parasites, on the carbonic anhydrase enzyme (CA, EC 4.2.1.1.) purified from fresh bovine erythrocyte. CA catalyses the rapid interconversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) to bicarbonate ([Formula: see text]) and protons (H(+)) and regulate the acidity of the local tissues. Bovine erythrocyte CA (bCA) enzyme was purified by Sepharose-4B affinity chromatography with a yield of 21.96% and 262.7-fold purification. The inhibition results obtained from this study showed Ki values of 9.73, 17.39, 20.43, 13.39, 16.44 and 17.73 nM for abamectin, doramectin, emamectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin and moxidectin, respectively. However, acetazolamide, well-known clinically established CA inhibitor, possessed a Ki value of 27.68 nM.

Topics: Acetazolamide; Animals; Antiparasitic Agents; Carbonic Anhydrases; Cattle; Disaccharides; Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel; Enzyme Activation; Erythrocytes; Ivermectin; Macrolides; Molecular Structure

A simple and rapid analytical method for the simultaneous determination of abamectin, emamectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin, doramectin and moxidectin residues in tea by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC/ESI-MS/MS) has been developed. The avermectins were extracted from the tea with acetonitrile after the tea was infiltrated in saturated aqueous NaCl solution, then cleaned up with a C18 solid phase extraction cartridge. The linear ranges were 2.0-50 microg/L and the correlation coefficients were all above 0.9920. Several UPLC-MS/MS conditions that included the mobile phase, monitor ions and the selection of calibration of the measurement were studied. The average recoveries and the relative standard deviations ranged from 61.7% to 85.4% and from 9.37% to 17.19%, respectively, in spiked samples at the concentrations of 5, 10, 20 microg/kg for moxidectin and 2, 5, 10 microg/kg for other analytes. This method is suitable for the determination of avermeetin residues in tea.

Topics: Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; Disaccharides; Drug Residues; Food Contamination; Humans; Ivermectin; Tandem Mass Spectrometry; Tea

Discovery of the CYP107Z subfamily of cytochrome P450 oxidases (CYPs) led to an alternative biocatalytic synthesis of 4''-oxo-avermectin, a key intermediate for the commercial production of the semisynthetic insecticide emamectin. However, under industrial process conditions, these wild-type CYPs showed lower yields due to side product formation. Molecular evolution employing GeneReassembly was used to improve the regiospecificity of these enzymes by a combination of random mutagenesis, protein structure-guided site-directed mutagenesis, and recombination of multiple natural and synthetic CYP107Z gene fragments. To assess the specificity of CYP mutants, a miniaturized, whole-cell biocatalytic reaction system that allowed high-throughput screening of large numbers of variants was developed. In an iterative process consisting of four successive rounds of GeneReassembly evolution, enzyme variants with significantly improved specificity for the production of 4''-oxo-avermectin were identified; these variants could be employed for a more economical industrial biocatalytic process to manufacture emamectin.

Topics: Biotransformation; Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System; Directed Molecular Evolution; Disaccharides; Gene Library; Genes, Bacterial; Insecticides; Ivermectin; Molecular Sequence Data; Mutation; Oxidation-Reduction; Streptomyces; Substrate Specificity

4"-Oxo-avermectin is a key intermediate in the manufacture of the agriculturally important insecticide emamectin benzoate from the natural product avermectin. Seventeen biocatalytically active Streptomyces strains with the ability to oxidize avermectin to 4"-oxo-avermectin in a regioselective manner have been discovered in a screen of 3,334 microorganisms. The enzymes responsible for this oxidation reaction in these biocatalytically active strains were found to be cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (CYPs) and were termed Ema1 to Ema17. The genes for Ema1 to Ema17 have been cloned, sequenced, and compared to reveal a new subfamily of CYPs. Ema1 to Ema16 have been overexpressed in Escherichia coli and purified as His-tagged recombinant proteins, and their basic enzyme kinetic parameters have been determined.

Topics: Amino Acid Motifs; Amino Acid Sequence; Bacterial Proteins; Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System; Ivermectin; Kinetics; Molecular Sequence Data; Oxidation-Reduction; Recombinant Proteins; Sequence Alignment; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Stereoisomerism; Streptomyces

The cytochrome P450 monooxygenase Ema1 from Streptomyces tubercidicus R-922 and its homologs from closely related Streptomyces strains are able to catalyze the regioselective oxidation of avermectin into 4"-oxo-avermectin, a key intermediate in the manufacture of the agriculturally important insecticide emamectin benzoate (V. Jungmann, I. Molnár, P. E. Hammer, D. S. Hill, R. Zirkle, T. G. Buckel, D. Buckel, J. M. Ligon, and J. P. Pachlatko, Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 71:6968-6976, 2005). The gene for Ema1 has been expressed in Streptomyces lividans, Streptomyces avermitilis, and solvent-tolerant Pseudomonas putida strains using different promoters and vectors to provide biocatalytically competent cells. Replacing the extremely rare TTA codon with the more frequent CTG codon to encode Leu4 in Ema1 increased the biocatalytic activities of S. lividans strains producing this enzyme. Ferredoxins and ferredoxin reductases were also cloned from Streptomyces coelicolor and biocatalytic Streptomyces strains and tested in ema1 coexpression systems to optimize the electron transport towards Ema1.

Topics: Amino Acid Sequence; Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System; Disaccharides; Ferredoxins; Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; Genetic Engineering; Industrial Microbiology; Ivermectin; Oxidation-Reduction; Oxidoreductases; Promoter Regions, Genetic; Pseudomonas putida; Sequence Alignment; Streptomyces; Transformation, Bacterial

The toxicity of a number of emamectin benzoate homologues and photodegradates to five species of Lepidoptera was investigated using diet and foliar bioassays. The emamectin benzoate homologues B1a and B1b were equally toxic in the diet and foliar assays to Spodoptera exigua (Hübner), Heliothis virescens (F.), Tricoplusia ni (Hübner), and Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), within each of these species. Plutella xylostella (L.) was the most sensitive species to emamectin benzoate. The AB1a photodegradate of emamectin benzoate was as toxic as the parent compound in the diet assay. However, in the foliage assay AB1a was 4.4-fold less toxic to S. exigua than the parent compound. The MFB1a photodegradate of emamectin benzoate was as toxic as the parent compound to P. xylostella, and 3.1 to 6.2 times as toxic as the parent compound to the other species in the diet assay. The order of toxicity of the photodegradates were AB1a > MFB1a > FAB1a > 8,9-Z-MAB1a > PAB1a.

Topics: Animals; Insecticides; Ivermectin; Lepidoptera; Photochemistry; Spodoptera