Opatovsky’s Lab
Insect Nutrition and Metabolism
From waste to product
The demand for alternative nutrient production (protein and fatty acids) and waste management protocols increase, due to growth in human population. Therefore, we study the use of Black soldier fly larvae (BSF) as agricultural waste reducers that combine production of protein source for fish and mammals feed. In this project we analyzing the effect of diet composed from the main agricultural waste sources in Israel on the life history characteristics and nutritional composition of the BSF.
In collaboration with
Liora Shaltiel-Harpaz, Adi Jones-Levi and Roee Gutman
Insect-fungi interactions
While the metabolic interactions between microorganisms and insects are known from bacteria, an understanding of the metabolic interactions between eukaryotic microorganisms (e.g. fungi) and insects is lacking and very complex to study. Revealing the exact metabolic activity and potential of the specific fungal species found in the BSF larval (BSFL) gut will provide novel knowledge regarding the complex metabolic interactions between these two eukaryotic groups. To address these hypotheses we employ an interdisciplinary approach combining experiments and advanced biochemical, molecular and bioinformatic methods.
Fatty-acid metabolism
One of the nutritional limitations of human diets is long chained polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), such as omega 3 (ω3) and omega 6 (ω6). Understanding the factors and pathways that affect the metabolism of fatty acid production in insects, will allow to manipulate the rearing protocol of BSF to generate high-quality fat.
Production of antimicrobial peptides
Insect's immune system is composed of anti-microbila peptides (AMP). As the BSF lives in environment of decaying material, it is deals with diverse community of microorganisms, therefor, it can produce diverse composition of AMPs relatively to other insects. In our work we study whether the yeast composition and identification in the insect gut, influence to composition of the AMPs produced by the larvae.
