Juvenile Hormone and the regulation of body size
Understanding how organisms regulate their body size is a fundamental problem in biology. Body size regulation involves the careful integration of mechanisms that control growth rate with those that control growth duration. In insects, developmental hormones such as juvenile hormone and ecdysone regulate developmental transitions and growth duration. The conserved insulin-signaling pathway regulates growth rates. Our studies reveal an intimate link between the three, whereby juvenile hormone controls body size by regulating ecdysone synthesis, which in turn modifies insulin signaling. In vertebrates, hormones such as androgens and estrogens interact with insulin signaling to influence tumor growth. By studying the developmental context of hormone interactions, our data reveal fundamental features of body size regulation that have im- portant consequences for understanding cancer growth.
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