Common bed bugs can biosynthesize pheromone components from amino acid precursors in human blood
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| Authors: | Gries, R; Zhai, HM; Lewis, AR; Britton, R; Gries, G |
| Year: | 2018 |
| Journal: | Can. J. Chem. 96: 212-216 Article Link (DOI) |
| Title: | Common bed bugs can biosynthesize pheromone components from amino acid precursors in human blood |
| Abstract: | We have recently shown that the aggregation pheromone of the common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, comprises a six-component blend of dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), dimethyl trisulfide (DMTS), (E)-2-hexenal, (E)-2-octenal, 2-hexanone, and histamine. Here, we tested the hypothesis that bed bugs biosynthesize some pheromone components from amino acid precursors in human blood, namely DMDS and DMTS from L-methionine and histamine from histidine. We tested this hypothesis by (i) allowing bed bugs to feed on and metabolize sheep blood enriched with C-13-labelled histidine or H-2-labelled methionine, (ii) extracting bed bug feces (a source of the aggregation pheromone), and (iii) analyzing feces extracts by GC-MS, HPLC-MS and NMR spectroscopy. The analyses revealed that bed bugs converted H-2-methionine to H-2-DMDS and H-2-DMTS, and C-13-histidine to C-13-histamine. There is not enough histidine in human blood to account for the amount of histamine that bed bugs produce and excrete with their feces, and only a small proportion of the available C-13-histidine was converted to C-13-histamine in our study. Therefore, it is likely that bed bugs biosynthesize histamine, and possibly also DMDS and DMTS, primarily de novo. |
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