Abstract
Lepidopteran insects produce and secrete silk proteins mainly for cocoon formation. The lepidopteran silks generally consist of several components. Fibroins are a major component of the silks. So far as we know, two different types of fibroins have been described for the silk fiber construction. One is known in the saturniid silkmoth, wherein only one component, fibroin, forms homodimers with a disulfide bond and representing a unit of silk fiber formation (Tamura T, Inoue H, Suzuki Y, Mol Gen Genet 206:189–195, 1987; Tanaka K, Mizuno S, Insect Biochem Mol Biol 31:665–677, 2001). The other mode of fiber construction is the fibroin complex that consists of three components, that is, the fibroin heavy chain (fhc; about 350 kDa), the fibroin light chain (flc; 26 kDa) and P25 (or fibrohexamerin) (about 30 kDa) (Tanaka K, Mori K, Mizuno S, Biochem (Tokyo) 114:1–4, 1993, Tanaka K, Inoue S, Mizuno S, Insect Biochem Mol Biol 29:269–276, 1999a). The representative of this mode is that of Bombyx mori.
We present specific features of lepidopteran fibroins by highlighting Antheraea and Bombyx fibroins. Particularly, the two types of fibroins consist of different mode of repetitive structures. We describe details of these features. In addition, we illustrate structure and conformation for other lepidopteran and trichopteran fibroin system. As Trichoptera is the sister order of Lepidoptera, it is very interesting to compare them from the viewpoint of the evolution of silk proteins. Finally, we discuss mode of fibroin evolution.
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Acknowledgment
We thank Prof. Tetsuo Asakura for his encouragement. We also express our thanks to Prof. Thomas A. Miller for his advice for improving our English writing. We thank Prof. František Sehnal for his critical reading and comments and for his discussion and guidance to Naoyuki Yonemura. We also appreciate Dr. Toshiki Tamura for their discussion and guidance to Naoyuki Yonemura.
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Yukuhiro, K., Sezutsu, H., Yonemura, N. (2014). Evolutionary Divergence of Lepidopteran and Trichopteran Fibroins. In: Asakura, T., Miller, T. (eds) Biotechnology of Silk. Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7119-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7119-2_2
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