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In the larval stage, that gland receives lots of nutritional information that helps it decide how to regulate ecdysone production.

They hypothesized that it had something to do with a steroid hormone involved in fruit fly growth called ecdysone, which is similar to estrogen and testosterone in humans.

Instead, a "stop growing" switch is triggered by the gland that makes ecdysone.

But once ecdysone reaches a certain level, the gland no longer needs that nutritional information to make decisions and starts regulating itself.

They knew ecdysone played a large part in the silkworm's life cycle, and when they discovered that it was remarkably similar to human sex hormones, they were fascinated.