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Abstract
Insects possess a cuticle that covers all tissues exposed to the outside world including
the body, the fore- and hindgut and the luminal side of the tracheae. The cuticle
is a multifunctional device that protects its carriers against dehydration, arms them
against predators, constitutes a physical barrier to prevent pathogen entry and serves
as an exoskeleton allowing locomotion. Depending the developmental stage and the body
part, the composition and function of the cuticle changes. The body cuticle of larvae
of holometabolous insects for example is soft while their cuticular head skeletons
used to chew food is hard. In spite of these differences, the basic architecture of
the insect cuticle is evolutionarily well conserved between developmental stages and
between species. The insect larval cuticle is formed at the apical site of a monolayer
of polarised epithelial cells that differentiate concomitantly during embryogenesis.
The stratified structure of the cuticle results from the concerted unfolding of basic
cellular functions including timed transcription, biosynthetic enzymatic cascades,
secretion and membrane trafficking as well as elaborate extracellular self-organization
of the components. The aim of this review is to summarize recent advances in understanding
these processes.
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