Judith Howard, Olga Chetina and colleagues at University of Durham ellucidate the crystal structure of Proctolin [Arg-Tyr-Leu-Pro-Thr], a much studied insect neuropeptide.
This is a very important step towards the design of the ideal insecticide, highly selective, environmentally friendly, safe and of course effective. It becomes even more relevant when we think about malaria and mosquitoes resistance to insecticides as one of the main problems to control the spread of the disease.
‘We have revealed the structure of Proctolin [Arg-Tyr-Leu-Pro-Thr]. The molecular association is very unusual for small peptides and it is hoped that the structure elucidation will enable the design of new insecticides towards the effective control of malaria’ say the authors of the paper.
I certainly hope so and I also think research like this one takes us a step closer!
Read the full paper that will be free to access until the end of October.
Crystal structure of the insect neuropeptide proctolin.
Judith A. K. Howard, Dmitry S. Yufit, Olga V. Chetina, Simon J. Teat, Silvia C. Capelli and Philip Pattison
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2010, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0OB00345J, Paper
