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Mode of Action of Ecdysones

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Abstract

Ecdysones are substances active as molting hormones in insects. When we coined the term, “ecdysone”, we believed that only one substance would exist naturally, the one isolated by us from Bombyx pupae (Butenandt and Karlson, 1954), but soon we discovered that even in Bombyx there are at least two active substances. The second one, described in 1955, was provisionally termed β-ecdysone (Karlson, 1955, 1956a). In re-isolating this compound, Hoffmeister (1966) termed it ecdysterone. Chemically it is 20-hydroxyecdysone and identical with crustecdysone, the crustacean molting hormone, first obtained in extracts from crustaceans in 1955 (Karlson, 1955, 1956a, b) and isolated and identified by Hampshire and Horn (1966).

Keywords

  • Juvenile Hormone
  • Hormonal Control
  • Integrator Gene
  • Dopa Decarboxylase
  • Tobacco Hornworm

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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© 1974 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Karlson, P. (1974). Mode of Action of Ecdysones. In: Burdette, W.J. (eds) Invertebrate Endocrinology and Hormonal Heterophylly. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65769-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-65769-6_4

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