James Bayley Butler with the Royal Army Medical Corps, beginning as a lieutenant in 1915 and retiring a major after the war. For his service, he was awarded an MBE. Butler's primary research interest was in applied biology. He carried out research on "Catenaria anguillulae", a parasite of the ova of the liver fluke, from 1922 to 1932. Later on, Butler focused on the control of wood-boring beetles and the fungus that causes dry rot in wood "Serpula lacrymans". On this matter, he became an international expert, and assisted in the development of the company Biotox, which manufactured insecticides and fungicides for use
Atromentin 4-HPP to observe the formation of atromentin. This was followed by characterization of the enzyme GreA in "Suillus grevillei", six (InvA1-6, of which InvA1, 2 and 5 were functional) in "Paxillus involutus", and NPS3 from "Serpula lacrymans". In addition, there is another adjacent and conserved gene encoding for an alcohol dehydrogenase/oxidoreductase whose function is unclear. In most cases the clustered biosynthetic genes are found orthologous in basidiomycetes. A common promoter motif was found shared between the atromentin synthetase and aminotransferase of 23 different atromentin-producing basidiomycetes that was in almost all cases absent from the alcohol dehydrogenase, indicating co-regulation of the