Liquid-sold chromatographic procedures for juvenile hormone purification and characterization

Three elution chromatographic systems for separating insect juvenile hormone are described with alumina, zinc carbonate, and silica gel as the adsorbents. From the behaviour of the hormone in these systems, it is concluded that the molecule is somewhat more polar than cholesterol which happened to be used as a reference. Lipoid extracts from five species of Lepidoptera belonging to four different families were compared in the alumina system and in each instance the biological activity was located in the same zone. This result provides physico-chemical support for the view based on transplantation experiments of corpora allata that these hormonally active substances may well be identical.