We prove the following statement (theorem 2.1). Let V/P be a birationally rigid Gorenstein Mori fibration on del Pezzo surfaces. If a Mori fibration W is birational to V , then either they are isomorphic, or W is non-Gorenstein. The result was obtained during my stay at the Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in Bonn. I would like to use this opportunity and thank the Directors and the staff of ...

The fundamental property of Fano varieties with mild singularities is that they have a finite polyhedral Mori cone. Thus, it is very interesting to ask: What we can say about algebraic varieties with a finite polyhedral Mori cone? I give a review of known results. All of them were obtained applying methods which were originated in the theory of discrete groups generated by reflections in hyperb...

Injection inoculation protocols for fruit body formation of Cordyceps militaris (C. militaris) were investigated to improve the incidence of infection in the silkworm species Bombyx mori (B. mori). Injection, with suspensions of C. militaris hyphal bodies into living silkworm pupae, was used to test for fruit body production. Use of Daeseungjam rather than Baegokjam or Keumokjam varieties of B....

A second-generation linkage map was constructed for the silkworm, Bombyx mori, focusing on mapping Bombyx sequences appearing in public nucleotide databases and bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) contigs. A total of 874 BAC contigs containing 5067 clones (22% of the library) were constructed by PCR-based screening with sequence-tagged sites (STSs) derived from whole-genome shotgun (WGS) sequ...

Female moths of Bombyx mori were artificially inseminated with cryopreserved semen. The fertility of inseminated females varied from 0% to 76.9% depending on the strain. Addition of fresh semen from triploid males, which are infertile but whose semen includes intact apyrene sperm, greatly improved fecundity of cryopreserved semen from normal males. Frozen apyrene sperm from the triploid donors ...

Transgenic insect-resistant cotton (Bt cotton) has been extensively planted in China, but its effects on non-targeted insect species such as the economically important honey bee (Apis mellifera) and silkworm (Bombyx mori) currently are unknown. In this study, pollen from two Bt cotton cultivars, one expressing Cry1Ac/EPSPS and the other expressing Cry1Ac/Cry2Ab, were used to evaluate the effect...

Peptidoglycan recognition protein (PGRP) binds specifically to peptidoglycan and plays an important role as a pattern recognition receptor in the innate immunity of insects. The cDNA of a short-type PGRP, an open reading frame of 588 bp encoding a polypeptide of 196 amino acids, was cloned from Bombyx mori. A phylogenetic tree was constructed, and the results showed that BmPGRP-S2 was most simi...

In Bombyx mori (B. mori), Fem piRNA originates from the W chromosome and is responsible for femaleness. The Fem piRNA-PIWI complex targets and cleaves mRNAs transcribed from the Masc gene. Masc encodes a novel CCCH type zinc-finger protein and is required for male-specific splicing of B. mori doublesex (Bmdsx) transcripts. In the present study, several silkworm strains carrying a transgene, whi...

The cocoon of the commercial silkworm Bombyx mori is used as a model natural nonwoven composite to formulate a model for structural properties of nonwoven composites. The model is based upon open cell foam structures for the intrinsic undamaged elastic properties using the component materials in the cocoon, combined with the effect of gradual loss of connectivity in the interfiber bonding as th...