ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Single mutation to a sex pheromone receptor provides adaptive specificity between closely related moth species.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 102 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
102 citing papers in PubMed.
- Odorant receptor structures predict the major female sex pheromone component in a moth.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Context-dependent activation and evolutionary buffering of a mating pheromone in fission yeast.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Temporal variation in sex pheromone release from individual Chilo suppressalis (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) females and maximization of male trapping.Crop health · 2026Article
- Molecular bases of insect odorant receptor function: specificity and evolution.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Research Progress on Sex Pheromone Receptors in Insects.Insects · 2026Review
- Life-stage dependent behavior mimics chemosensory repertoire diversity in a belowground, specialist herbivore.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Neurological confirmation of periplanone-D exploitation as a primary sex pheromone and counteractions of other components in the smoky brown cockroach Periplaneta fuliginosa.Cell and tissue research · 2025Article
- Article
- TBM preferred to AlphaFold 3 for functional models of insect odorant receptors.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- Evolution of queen pheromone receptor tuning in four honeybee species (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Apis).iScience · 2024Article
- Template-based modeling of insect odorant receptors outperforms AlphaFold3 for ligand binding predictions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Functional Characterization Supports Multiple Evolutionary Origins of Pheromone Receptors in Bark Beetles.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Genetics and the Evolution of Prezygotic Isolation.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2024Review
- Mating Pheromone (Gamone 1) inMicroorganisms · 2024Article
- A conserved pheromone receptor in the American and the Asian palm weevils is also activated by host plant volatiles.Current research in insect science · 2024Article
- Pheromone Perception in Fish: Mechanisms and Modulation by Internal Status.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- Evolutionary shifts in pheromone receptors contribute to speciation in four Helicoverpa species.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2023Article
- A tale of two copies: Evolutionary trajectories of moth pheromone receptors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Two odorant receptors regulate 1-octen-3-ol induced oviposition behavior in the oriental fruit fly.Communications biology · 2023Article
42 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Sex pheromone communication, acting as a prezygotic barrier to mating, is believed to have contributed to the speciation of moths and butterflies in the order Lepidoptera. Five decades after the discovery of the first moth sex pheromone, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that underlie the evolution of pheromone communication between closely related species. Although Asian and European corn borers (ACB and ECB) can be interbred in the laboratory, they are behaviorally isolated from mating naturally by their responses to subtly different sex pheromone isomers, (E)-12- and (Z)-12-tetradecenyl acetate and (E)-11- and (Z)-11-tetradecenyl acetate (ACB: E12, Z12; ECB; E11, Z11). Male moth olfactory systems respond specifically to the pheromone blend produced by their conspecific females. In vitro, ECB(Z) odorant receptor 3 (OR3), a sex pheromone receptor expressed in male antennae, responds strongly to E11 but also generally to the Z11, E12, and Z12 pheromones. In contrast, we show that ACB OR3, a gene that has been subjected to positive selection (ω = 2.9), responds preferentially to the ACB E12 and Z12 pheromones. In Ostrinia species the amino acid residue corresponding to position 148 in transmembrane domain 3 of OR3 is alanine (A), except for ACB OR3 that has a threonine (T) in this position. Mutation of this residue from A to T alters the pheromone recognition pattern by selectively reducing the E11 response ∼14-fold. These results suggest that discrete mutations that narrow the specificity of more broadly responsive sex pheromone receptors may provide a mechanism that contributes to speciation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.