Cyanobacteria associated with Anopheles albimanus Wiedemann larval habitats from southern Chiapas, Mexico, were isolated and identified from water samples and larval midguts using selective medium BG-11. Larval breeding sites were classified according to their hydrology and dominant vegetation. Cyanobacteria isolated in water samples were recorded and analyzed according to hydrological and vege...

Most northern insect species experience a period of developmental arrest, diapause, which enables them to survive over the winter and postpone reproduction until favorable conditions. We studied the timing of reproductive diapause and its long-term effects on the cold tolerance of Drosophila montana, D. littoralis and D. ezoana females in seasonally varying environmental conditions. At the same...

ML (MD2-related lipid recognition) proteins are known to enhance innate immune responses in mammals. This study reports the analysis of the putative ML gene family in Arabidopsis thaliana and suggests a role for the ML3 gene in herbivory-associated responses in plants. Feeding by larvae of the Lepidopteran generalist herbivore Spodoptera littoralis and larvae of the specialist herbivore Plutell...

The induction of plant defences and their subsequent suppression by insects is thought to be an important factor in the evolutionary arms race between plants and herbivores. Although insect oral secretions (OS) contain elicitors that trigger plant immunity, little is known about the suppressors of plant defences. The Arabidopsis thaliana transcriptome was analysed in response to wounding and OS...

BACKGROUND Pogonus littoralis and Pogonus chalceus are very close related species with quite different ecological preferences within salt marshes. We study the evolutionary processes in and between these presumably young species. Therefore, we compare the variation in ecologically relevant characters and the genetic variation within one of the species (intraspecific differentiation) with the va...

The pyrokinin/pheromone biosynthesis activating neuropeptide (PK/PBAN) family plays a significant role in the regulation of reproductive and developmental processes in a variety of insects. A transPro, type I beta-turn has been previously identified as important for the activity of PK/PBAN peptides. A PK/PBAN analog (PPK-Jo) incorporating a novel dihydroimidazole transPro mimetic motif was eval...

The present study has been conducted to investigate the effect of insect growth regulator BAY SIR 8514 on chitin and chitinase enzymes of 2 in star of Spodoptera littoralis larvae, the effect of sublethal doses, LC 25, LC 50 and LC90 shows a significant effect on antifeedant index, on the other hand larval treatment with the tested IGR doses revealed, certain histo-pathological symptoms such as...

The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis widely used as bio-pesticide. The specific toxic activity to insects and another microbe(s) regarding the existing of crystals that have different morphologies, sizes, numbers and compositions, as Bt strains the crystals have more different proteins, which contain encoded Cry distinct genes. In this work we isolated 334 colonies from 59 soil samples in 13 lo...

Plasma membrane H+-ATPase is a major integral membrane protein with a role in various physiological processes including abiotic stress response. To study the effect of NaCl on the expression pattern of a gene encoding the plasma membrane H+-ATPase, an experiment was carried out in a completely random design with three replications. A pair of specific primers was designed based on the sequence o...

aloe littoralis baker (asphodelaceae family) is a well known plant in southern parts of iran. because of its use in iranian traditional medicine as a wound-healing agent, the present study was carried out to investigate anti-inflammatory and wound healing activities of this plant in wistar rats. a. littoralis raw mucilaginous gel (alrmg) and also two gel formulations prepared from the raw mucil...