Two wound-inducible soybean cysteine proteinase inhibitors have greater insect digestive proteinase inhibitory activities than a constitutive homolog.

Diverse functions for three soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) cysteine proteinase inhibitors (CysPIs) are inferred from unique characteristics of differential regulation of gene expression and inhibitory activities against specific Cys proteinases. Based on northern blot analyses, we found that the expression in leaves of one soybean CysPI gene (L1) was constitutive and the other two (N2 and R1) were induced by wounding or methyl jasmonate treatment. Induction of N2 and R1 transcript levels in leaves occurred coincidentally with increased papain inhibitory activity. Analyses of kinetic data from bacterial recombinant CysPI proteins indicated that soybean CysPIs are noncompetitive inhibitors of papain. The inhibition constants against papain of the CysPIs encoded by the wound and methyl jasmonate-inducible genes (57 and 21 nM for N2 and R1, respectively) were 500 to 1000 times lower than the inhibition constant of L1 (19,000 nM). N2 and R1 had substantially greater inhibitory activities than L1 against gut cysteine proteinases of the third-instar larvae of western corn rootworm and Colorado potato beetle. Cysteine proteinases were the predominant digestive proteolytic enzymes in the guts of these insects at this developmental stage. N2 and R1 were more inhibitory than the epoxide trans-epoxysuccinyl-L-leucylamide-(4-guanidino)butane (E-64) against western corn rootworm gut proteinases (50% inhibition concentration = 50, 200, and 7000 nM for N2, R1, and E-64, respectively). However, N2 and R1 were less effective than E-64 against the gut proteinases of Colorado potato beetle. These results indicate that the wound-inducible soybean CysPIs, N2 and R1, function in host plant defense against insect predation, and that substantial variation in CysPI activity against insect digestive proteinases exists among plant CysPI proteins.