Approaches to quantify and manipulate insect hormone signals

Abstract

Hormones play a decisive role in many aspects of insect biology. To study processes controlled by hormones, one needs methods to identify and quantify hormone titers and tools to enhance or suppress hormonal signaling experimentally. In this review, we focus on the key lipidic insect hormones, the juvenile hormones (JHs), and the ecdysteroids. The lipophilic nature of JH and ecdysteroids in combination with their low endogenous titers makes handling and quantification challenging but feasible owing to the improvement of analytical detection methods. Chemical and genetic approaches to modulate hormonal homeostasis have been developed based on knowledge of hormone biosynthetic and biodegrading enzymes, transporters, and receptors and enabled by advances in reverse genetics techniques. Here, we overview contemporary methods available to detect and quantify JHs and ecdysteroids from insect samples and to manipulate endocrine homeostasis.