A digestive phospholipase A2 in larval mosquitoes, Aedes aegypti
1998
Nor Aliza, A.R. | Stanley, D.W.
We report on the presence of phospholipase A2 activity in whole larva and midguts of the yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti. Phospholipase A2 is responsible for hydrolyzing fatty acids from the sn-2 position of dietary phospholipids to release essential fatty acids for normal larval and adult growth. In contrast to the mammalian digestive phospholipase A2 background, the Ae. aegypti phospholipase A2 was Ca2+ -independent. We further characterized the mosquito midgut phospholipase A2 by altering the reaction conditions including incubation time, protein concentrations, pH and temperature. The site-specific PLA2 inhibitor oleyloxyethylphosphorylcholine failed to inhibit the enzyme at concentrations up to 5000 micromolar. We found that the phospholipase A2 activity was consistently high throughout the fourth instar, but fell to very low levels on the first day of pupation which is a non-feeding stage. The enzyme is regulated with respect to feeding activity because fasting and re-feeding modified the larval digestive PLA2 activity.
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