Does nutrient-dependent expression of insulin-like peptides from neuroendocrine cells in the CNS contribute to growth regulation in Drosophila?
These results point to a conserved role of the neuroendocrine axis in growth control in multicellular organisms.
Our data suggested that the upstream sequence of lscB is essential for expression of levansucrase while the N-terminus of LscB mediates an enhanced expression. In contrast, the upstream region of lscA does not lead to expression of lscB. We propose that lscA might be an ancestral levansucrase variant upstream of which the PAPE got inserted by potentially phage-mediated transposition events leading to expression of levansucrase in P. syringae.