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Updated: Jul 16, 2025

Protocols for Visualizing Steroidogenic Organs and Their Interactive Organs with Immunostaining in the Fruit Fly Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: April 14, 2017
Steroid hormone signaling: What we can learn from insect models
Naoki Okamoto1, Daiki Fujinaga2, Naoki Yamanaka2
1Life Science Center for Survival Dynamics, Tsukuba Advanced Research Alliance (TARA), University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Abstract:
Ecdysteroids are a group of steroid hormones in arthropods with pleiotropic functions throughout their life history. Ecdysteroid research in insects has made a significant contribution to our current understanding of steroid hormone signaling in metazoans, but how far can we extrapolate our findings in insects to other systems, such as mammals? In this chapter, we compare steroid hormone signaling in insects and mammals from multiple perspectives and discuss similarities and differences between the two lineages. We also highlight a few understudied areas and remaining questions of steroid hormone biology in metazoans and propose potential future research directions.
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