Spiralin is the most abundant protein at the surface of the plant pathogenic mollicute Spiroplasma citri and hence might play a role in the interactions of the spiroplasma with its host plant and/or its insect vector. To study spiralin function, mutants were produced by inactivating the spiralin gene through homologous recombination. A spiralin-green fluorescent protein (GFP) translational fusi...

Ethiopia is remarkably rich in its biological, ecological and landscape diversity and is home to outstanding natural bio-resources such as a number of herbs, aromatic and medicinal plants. The present study was carried out to study the composition, distribution and economic importance of insect pests of prioritized aromatic (Mentha sp., lemon verbena, fennel, rosemary, rosadamascene, oregano, p...

BACKGROUND The Baculovirus Expression Vector System (BEVS) is a very popular expression vector system in gene engineering. An effective host cell line cultivation protocol can facilitate the baculovirus preparation and following experiments. However, the counting of the number of host cells in the protocol is usually performed by manual observation with microscopy, which is time consuming and l...

Insect growth regulators (IGRs) are diverse groups of chemical compounds that are highly active against larvae of mosquitoes and other insects. The IGRs in general have a good margin of safety to most nontarget biota including invertebrates, fish, birds, and other wildlife. They are also relatively safe to man and domestic animals. The IGR compounds do not induce quick mortality in the preimagi...

Ethiopia is remarkably rich in its biological, ecological and landscape diversity and is home to outstanding natural bio-resources such as a number of herbs, aromatic and medicinal plants. The present study was carried out to study the composition, distribution and economic importance of insect pests of prioritized aromatic (Mentha sp., lemon verbena, fennel, rosemary, rosadamascene, oregano, p...

The expression of recombinant protein for structure determination is one of the major challenges in pharmaceutical and academic research, since the number of potential drug targets has increased significantly in the last decade. Despite the fact that the baculovirus expression vector system is widely used for this purpose, the system is hampered by three very slow and tedious procedures, namely...

6 Recent approvals of genetically engineered (GE) insect releases show much promise to combat 7 insect-vectored diseases, such as malaria. However, there is a need for a synthesized framework 8 to evaluate potential adverse ecological effects and social consequences of these tools. We 9 propose that adverse ecological effects associated with GE insect release may occur in two 10 phases: a trans...