The paper by Shuji and Miyuzu won The Most Valuable Paper of The Year 2019 in Microbes and Environments.
The paper by Shuji and Miyuzu wins The Most Valuable Paper (MBP) of The Year 2019 in Microbes and Environments, the international journal on microbial ecology and environmental microbiology.
https://www.microbes-and-environments.jp/most-valuable-paper-in-the-year-2019/
In the paper entitled “Antimicrobial Activities of Cysteine-rich Peptides Specific to Bacteriocytes of the Pea Aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum” (Vol. 34, No. 2, p. 155-160), the authors chemically synthesized Bacteriocyte-specific Cysteine-Rich (BCR) peptides that are known to express in bacteriocyte of a pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, and examined the impacts on the growth of E. coli and Sinorhizobium meliloti. As a result, some BCR peptides exhibited antimicrobial activities on the bacteria. This is the first report suggesting the occurrence of parallel evolution of cysteine-rich peptides in an insect and a plant for the regulation of endosymbionts.
The Award Selection Committee commented
This study is quite exciting and provides novel insights into the molecular mechanisms of host-endosymbiont relationship. We all are excited to see the following reports from the group of authors.
This study was conducted with Prof. Uchiumi and his collegues at Kagoshima Univ through a frame of the NIBB Collaboration Projects.
Awarded paper: