The inhibitory potential of purified α amylase inhibitors of sorghum on the digestive enzyme of Tribolium Castaneum, a devastating insect pest of economic importance have been studied. Qualitative and quantitative differences in α amylase of Tribolium Castaneum upon feeding on natural and artificial diets were evident. Natural diets were legumes like Black gram, Pigeon Pea, Red lentil, Cowpea a...

Segmentation is well understood in Drosophila, where all segments are determined at the blastoderm stage. In the flour beetle Tribolium castaneum, as in most insects, the posterior segments are added at later stages from a posteriorly located growth zone, suggesting that formation of these segments may rely on a different mechanism. Nevertheless, the expression and function of many segmentation...

Overview: In a world of worthy candidates, there are several compelling reasons to sequence the genome of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum. First and foremost, Tribolium is one of the most sophisticated genetic model organisms among all higher eukaryotes. Among arthropods, only Drosophila offers greater power and flexibility of genetic manipulation. Second, the Tribolium genome sequence...

Innate immunity is common to all metazoans and serves as a first line of defense against pathogens. Although the immune response of adult and larval insects has been well characterized, it remains unknown whether the insect egg is able to mount an immune response. Contrary to Drosophila, Tribolium eggs develop an extraembryonic epithelium, the serosa. Epithelia are well known for their ability ...

The gap gene hunchback in Drosophila acts during syncytial blastoderm stage via a short-range gradient and concentration-dependent activation or repression of target genes. Orthologues of hunchback can be easily found in other insects, but it has been unclear how well its functions are conserved. The segmentation process in most insect embryos occurs under cellular conditions, which should not ...

The segmentation gene hunchback (hb) plays a central role in determining the anterior-posterior pattern in the Drosophila embryo. We have cloned the homologue of hb from the flour beetle Tribolium and show that, on the basis of its expression pattern, most of its functions seem to be conserved between these two species. Like Drosophila, Tribolium has a maternal hb expression that appears to be ...

Not to be confused with.. Tribolium castaneum, the red flour beetle, is often confused with Tenebrio molitor, the common ‘meal worm’ found in pet shops. Although morphologically similar to Tenebrio, Tribolium is much smaller and even easier to breed. That’s why this beetle was used by population geneticists for decades before it was rediscovered as a system in which embryonic development, and o...

The iBeetle-Base (http://ibeetle-base.uni-goettingen.de) makes available annotations of RNAi phenotypes, which were gathered in a large scale RNAi screen in the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum (iBeetle screen). In addition, it provides access to sequence information and links for all Tribolium castaneum genes. The iBeetle-Base contains the annotations of phenotypes of several thousands of ...

A recent paper in BMC Biology reports the first large-scale insertional mutagenesis screen in a non-drosophilid insect, the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum. This screen marks the beginning of a non-biased, 'forward genetics' approach to the study of genetic mechanisms operating in Tribolium.