Juvenile Hormone Biosynthetic Enzymes as Targets for Insecticide Discovery

Juvenile hormone (JH) plays important roles in insect morphogenesis and reproduction. For this reason, interfering with its biosynthesis has long been considered a promising strategy for the development of target-specific insecticides. Although several inhibitors of JH biosynthetic enzymes have been developed, none have yet been used operationally for the management of insect pests. However, recent progress in the fields of molecular biology and structural bioinformatics has made it possible to clone and characterize key JH biosynthetic enzymes, opening the way to the rational design of highly specific and effective enzyme inhibitors. In addition, the discovery of insect-produced peptides that inhibit JH biosynthesis, the allatostatins, has led to the development of peptide analogs that inhibit JH biosynthesis in vivo, offering an alternative approach for interfering with JH production. This chapter provides an overview of the JH biosynthetic pathway as well as a synthesis of both early and recent work on the development of inhibitors of JH biosynthesis. We also review recent work aimed at the cloning and characterization of JH biosynthetic enzymes.