Insect Biochemistry/Hormones

Insects play an important role in agriculture, medicine, industry, and basic research in the following ways: (1) they are an integral component of agriculture, both as pollinators (honeybees) and as pests (grasshoppers, hornworms, and fruit flies); (2) they transmit a variety of diseases by serving as biological vectors of human pathogens (mosquitoes, ticks, and tsetse flies); (3) they produce organic products such as honey (honeybees), wax (honeybees and scale insects), and silk (silkworms); and (4) they are excellent genetic and neurological models of biological processes in complex organisms (fruit fly and tobacco hornworm). Recent applications of genomics, molecular genetics, and metabolomics have led to exciting new discoveries in insect biochemistry, especially with regard to metabolic regulation and hormone signaling.