The long-term objective is to discover the factors and their modes of interaction involved in the regulation of the synthesis of juvenile hormone (JH), a hormone in insects that plays a major role in the control of reproduction and development. The experimental insect studied is the viviparous cockroach Diploptera punctata.
The specific aims are: 1) To isolate factors from the ovary which have been demonstrated to both stimulate and inhibit JH production. These will be obtained from medium conditioned by ovaries of appropriate stage and purified by solid- phase extraction and high-pressure liquid chromatography. 2) To determine the neuropeptides other than the previously identified allatostatins in the nerve terminals within the CA that regulate JH production. Immunocytochemistry and in vitro radiochemical assay for JH synthesis will be used. 3) to continue to quantify changes in allatostatin release within the CA in vivo by several cytological methods and determine the factors that contribute to this release by treating brains with putative releasing factors and quantifying allatostatins with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. 4) To isolate the CDNA for the D. punctata allatostatin receptor, and to study the distribution, dynamics and intracellular transduction pathway of the receptor. These studies contribute to the basic understanding of neuroendocrine regulation of reproduction and development in insects. The health relatedness is to provide information useful for the development of methods to control insect vectors of disease as well as to contribute to the understanding of fundamental processes of neuroendocrine and endocrine secretion that are shared by insects and vertebrates.
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