Lulu Kong, Anrui Lu, Jingmin Guan, Bing Yang, Muwang Li, Julián F Hillyer, Nalini Ramarao, Kenneth Söderhäll, Chaoliang Liu, Erjun Ling
Thermolysin, a metallopeptidase secreted by pathogenic microbes, is concluded as an important virulence factor due to cleaving purified host proteins in vitro. Using the silkworm Bombyx mori as a model system, we found that thermolysin injection into larvae induces the destruction of the coagulation response and the activation of hemolymph melanization, which results in larval death. Thermolysin triggers the rapid degradation of insect and mammalian plasma proteins at a level that is considerably greater than expected in vitro and/or in vivo...
January 2015: Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology