Screening of antifeedant activity in brain extracts led to the identification of sulfakinin as a satiety promoter in the German cockroach. Are arthropod sulfakinins homologous to vertebrate gastrins-cholecystokinins?

The feeding cycle of the adult female cockroach Blattella germanica parallels vitellogenesis. The study of the mechanisms that regulate this cycle led us to look for food-intake inhibitors in brain extracts. The antifeedant activity of brain extracts was tested in vivo by injecting the extract and measuring the carotenoids contained in the gut from carrot ingested after the treatment. By HPLC fractionation and tracking the biological activity with the carrot test, we isolated the sulfakinin EQFDDY(SO3H) GHMRFamide (Pea-SK). A synthetic version of the peptide inhibited food intake when injected at doses of 1 microg (50% inhibition) and 10 microg (60% inhibition). The sulfate group was required for food-intake inhibition. These biological and structural features are similar to those of the gastrin-cholecystokinin (gastrin-CCK) family of vertebrate peptides. However, heterologous feeding assays (human CCK-8 tested on B. germanica, and Pea-SK tested on the goldfish Carassius auratus) were negative. In spite of this, alignment and cluster analysis of these and other structurally similar peptide families suggest that sulfakinins and gastrin-CCKs are homologous, and that mechanisms of feeding regulation involving these regulatory peptides may have been conserved during evolution between insects and vertebrates.