I personally believe that this was among the very best of the many ecdysone workshops I have attended and the book is certainly among the most comprehensive outcomes of any of the workshops. He deserves our thanks for that, and also for this volume that he labored over for many months. The Ghent meeting was beautifully organized by Professor Smagghe who seemed to be around 24 h a day insuring that everything proceeded correctly and on schedule. For at least current usage, I suggest that we use the term principal molting hormone for 20-hydroxyecdysone and the terms substrate for the molting hormone and/or hormone for ecdysone (although many Drosophila geneticists still use the term ecdysone for 20-hydroxecdysone but that is another problem). In time they did! Despite the molecular focus of this meeting there remains much research to do at the physiological and biochemical levels, let alone in the areas of chemistry and crystallography, to further define the roles of these hormones that serve more organisms on this planet than any other steroid hormone. Indeed Karlson wrote several theoretical papers subsequently urging endocrinologists working on mammals to accept that view. Further, it must be remembered that the research of Ulrich Clever and Peter Karlson on Chironomus was the very first to demonstrate that a steroid hormone acts at the nuclear level and v However, a reading of the older literature as well as new work has demonstrated convincingly that ecdysone does have regulatory roles of its own, and perhaps joins with 20-hydroxyecdysone to initiate the molting process. Later, it was found that ecdysone was converted to 20-hydroxyecdysone in tissues peripheral to the prothoracic glands through the mediation of an ecdysone monooxygenase and we then believed that ecdysone was only the precursor for 20-hydroxyecdysone. In the 1950s when the Butenandt and Karlson laboratory first crystallized and characterized ecdysone, it was thought to be the insect molting hormone since when injected into experimental insects the result was molting.

I use the plural because the nomenclature has indeed undergone a metamorphosis akin to what our experimental animals undergo. Clearly, all that was presented at the meeting and in this volume cannot be summarized here in a single page, but the reader is cordially invited to explore this relatively large volume that attempts to synthesize the most current knowledge base for this important category of steroid hormones. This book, and the meeting itself, is comprised of 23 contributed chapters falling into five general categories: Fundamental Aspects of Ecdysteroid Research: The Distribution and Diversity of Ecdysteroids in Animals and Plants Ecdysteroid Genetic Hierarchies in Insect Growth and Reproduction Role of Cross Talk and Growth Factors in Ecdysteroid Titers and Signaling Ecdysteroid Function Through Nuclear and Membrane Receptors Ecdysteroids in Modern Agriculture, Medicine, Doping and Ecotoxicology. The workshop itself had 54 oral presentations as well as many posters. This book resulting from the meeting is more up-to-date than might be expected since manuscripts were not delivered to the editor until 2007. These young scientists had the opportunity to discuss their work with many senior scientists at meals, breaks and during the several social events, and were encouraged to do so.

The 16th International Ecdysone Workshop took place at Ghent University in Belgium, July 10РІР‚вЂњ14, 2006 and drew some 150 attendees, many of these young students and postdoctoral associates. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Library of Congress Control Number: 2008938015 Р’В© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. Editor Guy Smagghe Laboratory of Agrozoology Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Ghent University Belgium

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