METACHEMOGENESIS IN INSECTS — ROCKSTEIN 269 



organ or tissue signifies a dual, matching dephosphorylating mechanism 

 in the intermediary metabolism of carbohydrates such as glycogen.) 

 Just prior to the completion of this paper, the writer was particu- 

 larly gratified to receive from Japan a short report by Sakagami and 

 Maruyama (1956) which stated that the enzyme system primarily 

 concerned with flight muscle contraction (Gilmour, 1953), adenosine 

 triphosphatase (ATPase), extracted from the thoracic flight muscle, 

 showed a similar increase in activity during the first week of adult 

 life in the worker honey bee (fig. 3). The magnesium-activated 



Table i. — Cholinestcrasc activity of normal flics and of those resistant to DDT * 

 (After Babers and Pratt, 1950.) 



Normal flies Resistant flies 



Age ^ ^ , ' , 



(days) Males Females Males Females 



Just emerged 0.187 0.187 0.130 0.142 



1 0.475 0.350 0.307 0.212 



2 0.437 0.207 0.412 0.187 



3 0.545 0.287 0.382 0.187 



4 0.512 0.400 0.487 0.200 



5 0.612 0.312 0.325 0.207 



6 0.427 0.225 0.525 0.482 



7 0.645 0.357 0.512 0.350 



8 0.502 0.307 0.717 0.337 



9 0.262 0.537 0.362 



10 0.267 •••• 0.255 



II 0.317 0.287 



• Rates are in milliliters of 0.02 N sodium hydroxide added in 20 minutes. 



enzyme especially showed an increase of lOo percent from the ist to 

 the 5th day and well over lOO percent by the loth day, with a gradual 

 leveling off in activity thereafter up through the 20th day of adult 

 life. The change in the calcium-activated enzyme followed this pat- 

 tern precisely, but the increase involved was only about 25 to 30 per- 

 cent. They also cite the earlier work by Maruyama that ATPase 

 activity rapidly reaches its maximum value in the (shorter-lived) 

 house fly within i hour after emergence of the adult from the pu- 

 parium. This is exciting confirmation of this writer's hypothesis of 

 postemergent biochemical maturation (metachemogenesis) in relation 

 to the development of flight ability ; viz, the remarkable coincidence 

 of rise in the brain enzyme related to nerve impulse transmittance 

 and in tissue enzymes related to the energizing of contraction of 

 (flight) muscles in two species of insects from two widely different 

 orders and with two considerably different life spans. These two 



