Comparative transcriptome analysis of galls from four different host plants suggests the molecular mechanism of gall development.

Galls are plant structures generated by gall-inducing organisms including insects, nematodes, fungi, bacteria and viruses. Those made by insects generally consist of inner callus-like cells surrounded by lignified hard cells, supplying both nutrients and protection to the gall insects living inside. This indicates that gall insects hijack developmental processes in host plants to generate tissues for their own use.

Inside the horn of plenty: Leaf-mining micromoth manipulates its host plant to obtain unending food provisioning.

Leaves represent the main resource for herbivorous insects and their performances are mainly a function of leaf nutritional quality. Two feeding strategies are known to optimize the exploitation of leaf resources: leaf-miners that selectively feed on tissues of high nutritional quality and gall-inducers that induce the development of a new tissue showing an enhanced nutritional value. Some leaf-miners are known to also manipulate their nutritional environment, but do not affect plant development.

An ABC transporter involved in the control of streptomycin production in Streptomyces griseus.

We screened for a gene that inhibits streptomycin production in Streptomyces griseus when it is introduced on a high-copy-number plasmid pIJ702, and obtained a plasmid pKM545. The introduction of pKM545 abolished streptomycin production on all media tested including YMP-sugar and Nutrient broth. S1 protection analysis demonstrated that the introduction of this plasmid downregulated the transcriptional activity of the promoter preceding strR, the pathway-specific transcriptional regulator for streptomycin biosynthesis.