Research on the molluscicidal activity and molecular mechanisms of arecoline against Pomacea canaliculata

Pomacea canaliculata, as an invasive snail in China, can adversely affect agricultural crop yields, ecological environment, and human health. In this paper, we studied the molluscicidal activity and mechanisms of arecoline against P. canaliculata. The molluscicidal activity tests showed that arecoline exhibits strong toxicity against P. canaliculata, and the LC50 value (72 h) was 1.05 mg/L (15 ± 2 mm shell diameter). Additionally, Molluscicidal toxicity were negatively correlated with the size of snails. Snails (25 ± 2 mm shell diameter) were choosed for mechanisms research and the result of microstructure and biochemistry showed that arecoline (4 mg/L, 20 ℃) had strong toxic effect on the gill, and the main signs were the loss of cilia in the gill filaments. Moreover, arecoline significantly decreased the oxygen consumption rate, ammonia excretion rate and inhibited acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Then, the changes in protein expression were studied by iTRAQ, and 526 downregulated proteins were found. Among these, cilia and flagella-associated 157-like (PcCFP) and rootletin-like (PcRoo) were selected as candidate target proteins through bioinformatics analysis, and then RNA interference (RNAi) was adopted to verify the function of PcCFP and PcRoo. The results showed that after arecoline treated, the mortality and the cilia shedding rate of PcRoo RNAi treated group was significantly lower than control group. The above results indicate that arecoline can bind well with protein PcRoo, and then leads to the drop of gill cilia, affect respiratory metabolism, accelerate its entry into hemolymph, inhibit AChE and finally leads to the death of P. canaliculata.