The adipokinetic hormones and their cognate receptor from the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria: solution structure of endogenous peptides and models of their binding to the receptor.

The study proposes a model of binding of the three endogenous ligands to the one existing AKHR in the desert locust and paves the way to use such a model for the design of peptide analogs and finally, peptide mimetics, in the search for novel species-specific insecticides based on receptor-ligand interaction.