甲状旁腺激素受体（PTHR）主要调节脊椎动物骨骼、肾脏等组织的发育，但昆虫中只有起类似功能的表皮和脂肪体。而且模式昆虫果蝇、家蚕、冈比亚按蚊等均无该信号系统，它是否在无脊椎动物中遗失曾是一个迷，最近我们才首次在赤拟谷盗等昆虫中发现了其类似受体（PTHRL）的存在，敲减该受体导致大部分赤拟谷盗不能顺利羽化，羽化的成虫翅膀粗糙且无法正常折叠。暗示该受体在昆虫与脊椎动物之间具有显著的功能差异性、而且昆虫中关于PTHRL受体与配体的进化关系、如何参与昆虫相关生理功能及信号传导机制尚不清楚。因此我们拟分析PTHR在后生动物中的进化适应性，利用受体配体检测技术鉴定其在赤拟谷盗中的潜在内源性配体，探讨其对赤拟谷盗表皮发育的影响机制，利用免疫共沉淀等实验鉴定其互作蛋白并通过蛋白质组学解析其下游信号传导网络，以阐明PTHRL的生理功能及其对表皮发育的调控机理，为开发特异性杀虫剂靶标提供基础。

Parathyroid hormone receptor (PTHR) mainly regulates kidney and bone development in vertebrates. However, insects do not have these organs, but replaced by epidermis and fat body with similar functions. Meanwhile, the PTHR signal system has not been discovered in any model insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, Bombyx mori and Anopheles gambiae. Whether this signal system is lost in invertebrates had been a mystery. Until recently, we have originally mined out the putative PTHR-like (PTHRL) receptors from Tribolium castaneum and several other insects. Knocking down the pthrls of T. castaneum resulted that most beetles were arrested before eclosion, and even though some beetles could eclosion into adults, they were with abnormal folded elytra and rougher epidermis than the control. The result indicated that the functions of pthrls have significantly differentiated between insects and vertebrates. And it is not clear whether the receptor and ligands of PTHRL have co-evolutioned in invertebrates, how these receptors participate in insect physiology, and what the mechanism of these signal transduction systems is. Thus we are planning to analyze the adaptive evolution of PTHR in the metazoa, and identify their potential endogenous ligands in T. castaneum by receptor-ligand assay. We will explore the regulation mechanism of PTHRLs in the epidermal development in T. castaneum, detect the interacting proteins for PTHRLs by co-immunoprecipitation, and illustrate the PTHRLs signal transduction pathway on the epidermal development as well as the downstream signal transduction network of PTHRLs by proteomics methods. And finally, we are going to further elucidate the function and the regulation mechanism of PTHRLs in the epidermal development in T. castaneum, and even to discover the novel bio-insecticides which may target for PT