As an important economic insect, silkworm Bombyx mori (L.) (Lepidoptera: Bombycidae) has numerous advantages in life science, such as low breeding cost, large progeny size, short generation time, and clear genetic background. Additionally, there are rich genetic resources associated with silkworms. The completion of the silkworm genome has further accelerated it to be a modern model organism in...

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) is an exceptional scientist who opened a new era in medicine and biology. Starting from studies on crystals of by-products of wine fermentation, he first defined a distinct chemistry between dead and living matters. He then showed the role of living microbes in the fermentation and putrefaction processes. This brought him to challenge the two-millennium-old theory of s...

In the silkworm, Bombyx mori, normal markings are mainly controlled by the +P gene, which is located on the second chromosome. Due to a lack of crossing over in females, reciprocal backcrossed F1 (BC1) progenies were used for linkage analysis and mapping of the +P gene based on an SSR linkage map using silkworm strains P50 and H9, which are normal marking and sex-limited marking, respectively. ...

We previously reported that the cvfB gene (SA1223) of Staphylococcus aureus is responsible for the virulence of this pathogenic bacterium. We show here that the cvfB gene regulates exoprotein gene expression. In a cvfB gene deletion mutant, hemolysin, DNase, and protease production were decreased, whereas protein A expression was increased. The amount of RNAIII, the transcript from the P3 promo...

The quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with cocoon traits in silkworms were mapped in 44 individuals of a backcross of Dazao females with hybrid F(1) males; the hybrid males were from females of inbred C(1)00 strain, which have white cocoons and superior cocoon traits, crossed with males of inbred strain Dazao, which have green cocoons and inferior cocoon traits. Nineteen putative major ...

Genetic modification has not only been applied in bacteria but also in animals. Transgenic mice, sheep, dogs, zebra fish, flies and silkworms have appeared in laboratories, as have transgenic mosquitoes. Anopheline mosquitoes that transmit malaria have been targeted for the insertion of transgenes to reduce their ability to spread disease [1]. Some laboratories, including ours, have succeeded i...

The baculovirus is a classic example of a parasite that alters the behavior or physiology of its host so that progeny transmission is maximized. Baculoviruses do this by inducing enhanced locomotory activity (ELA) that causes the host caterpillars to climb to the upper foliage of plants. We previously reported that this behavior is not induced in silkworms that are infected with a mutant baculo...

Nanobiomaterials such as enveloped virus-like particles with specificity can serve a dual function of vaccination and drug delivery system. Here, we expressed colon carcinoma cell-targeting chimeric virus-like particles (VLPs) made using two capsid proteins, gag and M1 from influenza virus A/swine flu/Iowa/15/30/H1N1 in silkworms. These chimeric VLPs displayed a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anc...

Genome engineering using programmable nucleases enables homologous recombination (HR)-mediated gene knock-in. However, the labour used to construct targeting vectors containing homology arms and difficulties in inducing HR in some cell type and organisms represent technical hurdles for the application of HR-mediated knock-in technology. Here, we introduce an alternative strategy for gene knock-...

Asymmetric Conjugate Addition of ortho-Quinone Methides as a Pathway to the Core of Nomofungin Introduction: Tetracyclic structures are found at the core of many biologically active molecules. One class of compounds with a tetracyclic core is the family of communesin products. 1 These products have shown cytotoxicity against several leukemia cell lines as well as insecticidal activity against s...