Assistant Professor Mississippi State University Starkville, Mississippi
UDP-glycosyltransferases (UGTs) are important conjugation enzymes found in all kingdoms of life, catalyzing sugar-transferring reactions with small lipophilic compounds and playing pivotal roles not only in detoxification, but in other physiological processes in insects. The glycoside conjugation increases water solubility making the compounds more easily excretable, thereby protecting the cellular system from damage by toxic compounds. It is also involved in pigment sequestration providing color to the cuticle, wings or cocoons in insects. Some UGTs are highly expressed in insect antennae, proposing a novel function in olfaction. Insect UGTs, therefore, show multifaceted roles in insect. UGTs have been identified in a number of insect genomes over the last decade and much progress has been achieved in characterizing their expression patterns and molecular functions. Since UGTs constitute one of the largest multigene families, their genomic repertoires are reflected by lineage-specific gene diversifications, along with several conserved ones within different levels of taxa. In this presentation, insect UGTs will be introduced with a recent update of the Drosophila UGTs and other arthropod UGTs from the perspectives of comparative genomics and phylogenetic analyses.
