Insect Moulting Hormones: A Study of 4-En-3-one Steroids as Possible Ecdysteroid Precursors.

Abstract

The trienol ether (15) of cholesta-4,7-dien-3-one (4) is oxidized with peroxy acid mainly to the 6-hydroxy derivatives (6) and (7) and the corresponding cholesta-4,7-diene-3,6-dione (8). However, the biosynthesis of ecdysteroids may not proceed by a similar pathway since the labelled keto diene (5) was not incorporated into 20-hydroxyecdysone (10) in Calliphora stygia. None of the possible 4-en-3-one ecdysteroid precursors synthesized (6), (7), (8), (18) were active in the Calliphora assay.