Bark beetles are among the most significant economic pests in North America, causing the loss of billions of board feet of timber each year and adding to the fuel load that contributed to the devastating wild fires in the western U.S. over the past several decades. The long term goal of this project is to develop new and effective pest management tactics based on pheromone systems. Except for a brief pheromone directed flight, bark beetles spend the majority of their lives protected beneath the bark of the trees they colonize and kill. Pheromones are essential for beetles to mount the 'mass attack' that leads to tree death. The work described in this proposal is designed to gain an understanding of the biochemical processes by which bark beetles produce pheromones. Bark beetles produce pheromone components in the midgut by mobilizing and up-regulating the enzymes of the mevalonate pathway and by specialization of the enzymes that detoxify tree defensive chemicals. These two processes are connected by a novel enzyme that serves two functions and produces the precursor to the major pheromone components of bark beetles. The work described in this proposal is designed to characterize this novel enzyme and to characterize other terminal steps in pheromone production. This grant will be used to train one post-doctoral fellow and one graduate student, and several undergraduates will also work on the project as they complete their senior thesis work.
