Thread: Winter Reading
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Old July 20, 2013   #74
ChrisK
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Stumbled on this one yesterday while looking for something else.

Adaptive evolution of threonine deaminase in plant defense against insect herbivores

In a nutshell, tomato expresses a gene in response to herbivore feeding. The ingested protein is cleaved in the lepidopteran gut where it becomes active and degrades threonine, an amino acid needed by the insect.
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