| Abstract: | A suite of adaptations allows insects to survive in hostile terrestrial environments for long periods of time. Temperature represents a key environmental factor for most ectothermic insects, and they rapidly acclimate to high and low temperatures. Vast amounts of data in this research field support the idea that an insect's ability to tolerate fluctuating temperatures can be regarded as a biphasic hormetic dose response. Observation indicates that their thermal hormetic response represents a conservative estimate of their intrinsic capacity for rapid adaptation to environmental changes in nature because they naturally experience diel or seasonal temperature fluctuations. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the hormetic response in insects reflects a surplus physiological capacity to deal with temperature changes that they would experience naturally. Although it has been unknown how thermal acclimation is induced, a stress-dependent increase in N-acetyltyrosine (NAT) was recently found to occur in insect larvae who had endured high temperatures. NAT treatment was demonstrated to induce thermotolerance in several tested insect species. NAT was also identified in the serum of humans as well as mice, and its concentration in mice was shown to be increased by heat and restraint stress, with NAT pretreatment lowering the concentrations of corticosterone and peroxidized lipids in stressed mice. These recent findings may give us some hints about how long a hormetic response lasts. Here, I will discuss recent findings underlying hormetic responses induced by an intrinsic factor, NAT, and how the hormetic response may begin and end. |
