Biochemistry 6th Edition by Reginald Garrett,Charles Grisham

Exercise 24

Assesing the Survival of Monarch Butterflies Feeding on a Toxic Diet How are monarch butterflies able to feed on the toxic milkweed plant and store cardiac glycosides in their exoskeleton without suffering the ill effects of this potent poison? Consult the following reference and summarize the biochemical accommodation that makes this possible. (Dobler, S., Della, S., Wagschal, V., and Agrawal, A. A., 2012. Community-wide convergent evolution in insect adaptation to toxic cardenolides by substitutions in the Na, K-ATPase. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 109 :13040-13045.