Desert locust: a notorious pest of crops but with potential health benefits to humans as food

In the face of global food security threat, insects are increasingly been recognized as a source of food and, potential new products and therapeutics among which are sterols. Here we profile sterols and their derivatives present in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, after feeding on wheat seedlings. Using coupled gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we detected a total of 34 sterols in the gut of which 5 were unique to the insect not detected in the wheat seedlings. The unique sterols identified as 7-dehydrocholesterol, desmosterol, fucosterol, (3β, 5α) cholesta-8, 14, 24-trien-3-ol, 4, 4-dimethyl, and (3β, 20R) cholesta-5, 24-dien-3, 20-diol are known to have beneficial effects on human health in the areas of prostate health, cardiovascular diseases, cholesterol lowering, anticancer, weight loss, Rheumatoid arthritis, immune boosting, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic activity, antioxidant etc. The detection of these unique components in the insect was further confirmed by incubating the gut with labeled cholesterol- cholesterol-[4-13C]. Furthermore, most of the common phytosterols were amplified in the locust tissues as significantly higher amounts were observed in the insect compared to wheat. Our findings show that the desert locust ingests phytosterols from a vegetative diet and, amplifies and metabolizes them into derivatives with potential salutary benefits.