LAUSR

Baculoviruses are classic pathogens that alter host behavior to enhance their dispersal and transmission. While viral protein tyrosine phosphatase (ptp) has been considered as a critical factor for inducing enhanced locomotory activity, preceding investigations have reported that viral ecdysteroid UDP-glucosyltransferase (egt) contributes to triggering climbing behavior in some virus and host species. Here we found that both egt and ptp were dispensable for these abnormal behaviors in Bombyx mandarina larvae induced by Bombyx mori nucleopolyhedrovirus, thus implying that there is an unknown core mechanism of baculovirus-induced alteration of host behaviors.