# CHEMISTRY OF ARTHROPOD SECRETIONS

> **NIH NIH R01** · CORNELL UNIVERSITY · 1992 · $249,157

## Abstract

Insects and other arthropods constitute over half of the living animal
species on earth; they are important not only from a biological viewpoint,
but as disease vectors, and as agricultural, forest, and household pests.
Insects interact chemically with one another, with plants, with animal
hosts, and with predators. This project is concerned with elucidating the
chemistry of these interactions. For the arthropods themselves, attention
will be paid not only to glandular substances, but also to systemic
components that may play important roles in arthropod defense and/or
communication.

The venoms of spiders appear to be especially interesting, since some of
their low molecular weight components cause paralysis of prey by novel
mechanisms. An important objective will be the characterization and
synthesis of some of these toxins from spider venoms. Another new objective
will be the initiation of a synthetic program designed to define the
structural requirements for the anti-viral activity recently described for
the lucibufagins.

Plants have been co-evolving with insects for many millions of years, and
the chemical relationships between these two groups of organisms are rich
and interesting. Our work with plants will emphasize the isolation and
characterization of new insect repellents, and the utilization of plant
alkaloids as insect defensive agents and pheromone precursors.

In all cases, new compounds with demonstrable biological activities will be
isolated and characterized. Chemical syntheses will be carried out to
confirm structures and to provide material for bioassays. The overall
objectives of this work are (1) to increase our understanding of natural
regulatory mechanisms, (2) to provide the basis for new control techniques
of disease vectors or other pests, and (3) to discover new chemistry which
may be useful in the development of drugs for viral and neurological
diseases.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 3125086
- **Project number:** 5R01AI012020-20
- **Recipient organization:** CORNELL UNIVERSITY
- **SAM.gov UEI:** G56PUALJ3KT5
- **Principal Investigator:** JERROLD MEINWALD
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 1992
- **Award amount:** $249,157
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1976-09-01 → 1995-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3125086

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 3125086, CHEMISTRY OF ARTHROPOD SECRETIONS (5R01AI012020-20). Retrieved via MORVS 2026-10-25 from https://api.morvs.ai/grant/nih/3125086. Licensed CC0.

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