Piwi proteins are part of a superfamily of Argonaute proteins, which are one of the core components of the RNA silencing pathway in many eukaryotes. Piwi proteins are thought to repress the transposon expression both transcriptionally and post-transcriptionally. Recently, Drosophila melanogaster Piwi was recently reported to associate with chromatin and to interact directly with the Heterochrom...

Bombyx mori cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus (BmCPV) is one of the most important pathogens of silkworm. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been demonstrated to play key roles in regulating host-pathogen interaction. However, there are limited reports on the miRNAs expression profiles during insect pathogen challenges. In this study, four small RNA libraries from BmCPV-infected midgut of silkworm at 72 h po...

6 7 8 Minna Hassinen, Salla Laulaja, Vesa Paajanen, Jaakko Haverinen and Matti Vornanen 9 University of Eastern Finland, Department of Biology, P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland 10 11 12 13 Short title: Thermal adaptation of cardiac potassium current in crucian carp 14 15 16 17 Address for correspondence: 18 Matti Vornanen 19 University of Eastern Finland 20 Department of Biology, P.O. box 1...

The impact of PGF2? on total proteins, free amino acids and the amino transferases in the gonads of silkworm, Bombyx mori L. were investigated in the present experiment. The effect of PGF2? resulted in increase in the total protein and free amino acid contents in the gonads of silkworm larvae indicating improved structural and dynamic levels of organization. The enhanced activity levels of amin...

The genetic variation and diversity among fifty-eight polyvoltine silkworm genotypes was estimated by using ten economic traits. The results revealed that the single shell weight showed higher genetic variation such as PCV% (17.20%), GCV% (12.93%), and heritability (56.5%) followed by single cocoon weight, shell ratio and matured larval weight. The D2 (Mahalonobis? distance) statistics reveal...

New antimicrobials with novel mechanisms need to be developed to combat antimicrobial-resistant pathogenic bacteria. The current authors recently reported discovery of a new antibiotic named "Lysocin E". Lysocin E was identified using a silkworm model of bacterial infection. The current review discusses the advantages of using a silkworm model of bacterial infection to identify and develop ther...

In 1989, indole alkaloid okaramines isolated from the fermentation products of Penicillium simplicissimum were shown to be insecticidal, yet the mechanism of their toxicity to insects remains unknown. We therefore examined the action of okaramine B on silkworm larval neurons using patch-clamp electrophysiology. Okaramine B induced inward currents which reversed close to the chloride equilibrium...

Pinellia ternata agglutinin (PTA) is highly homologous to many other monocot mannose-binding lectins which reportedly possess antitumor activities. Its production in silkworm cells has great application potential because the baculovirus expression system can produce post-translationally modified proteins at low cost. In the current study, the pta gene was cloned and expressed in silkworm cells,...

Gene targeting can be achieved by precise genetic modifications through homology-directed repair (HDR) after DNA breaks introduced by genome editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 system. The most common form of HDR is homologous recombination (HR). Binding to the DNA breaks by HR factors is thought to compete with non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), an alternative DNA repair pathway. Here, we knocke...

We identified 277 alternative splice forms in silkworm genes based on aligning expressed sequence tags with genomic sequences, using a transcript assembly program. A large fraction (74%) of these alternative splices are located in protein-coding regions and alter protein products, whereas only 26% are in untranslated regions. From the alternative splices located in protein-coding regions, some ...