PDEs in Nematodes: Potential Target for Controlling Agricultural Pests
Since PDEs are the sole mechanism for degrading cyclic nucleotides in animal cells, they are an important pharmacological target for altering physiological processes controlled by the cGMP or cAMP signaling pathways. Interestingly, although plants use cyclic nucleotides as second messengers, there are no known PDEs present in any plant genome for which sequence information is available. This makes PDEs attractive targets for developing compounds that inhibit PDEs present in animal pests that reduce yields of agriculturally important crops.
Plant parasitic nematodes, such as root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.), have six of the eleven PDE families found in vertebrates, namely PDE1, PDE2, PDE3, PDE4, PDE8, and PDE10. Based on differences in the amino acid sequence of nematode PDEs and their vertebrate counterparts, we believe that compounds targeting plant parasitic nematodes can be developed that lack adverse effects on vertebrates or on plants.
Plant parasitic nematodes, such as root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.), have six of the eleven PDE families found in vertebrates, namely PDE1, PDE2, PDE3, PDE4, PDE8, and PDE10. Based on differences in the amino acid sequence of nematode PDEs and their vertebrate counterparts, we believe that compounds targeting plant parasitic nematodes can be developed that lack adverse effects on vertebrates or on plants.
