As many crop plants do not have a glycine betaine synthetic pathway, genetic engineering of glycine betaine biosynthesis pathways represents a potential way to improve the tolerance of crop plant to stress and many attempts have been examined (Chen & Murata, 2002; Rontein et al., 2002). However, the engineered levels of betaine are generally low, and the increases in tolerance are commensurately small (Hibino et al., 2002). Subsequent works have shown that increasing the supply of choline precursors results in increased betaine levels (Bhuiyan et al., 2007). In a previous study,

we have demonstrated that the transgenic plant expressing a gene encoding 3-phosphoglycerate Venetoclax dehydrogenase (PGDH), which catalyzes

the first step of the phosphorylated pathway of serine biosynthesis, could contribute to increase in levels of betaine as well as glycine and serine (Waditee et al., 2007). Therefore, the attempt to express PGDH, SHMT, and glycine betaine synthesis gene together would be worthwhile to test for the improvement of salinity stress in crop plants via boosting the levels of glycine betaine. This work was supported in part by grants-in-aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan and the International Center for Green Biotechnology of Meijo University to T.T. The work was supported in part by Asahi Glass Foundation and the Faculty of Science A1B1-MICO (TRF) Gamma-secretase inhibitor to R.W.S.

R.W.S. and D.S. contributed equally ADP ribosylation factor to this work. Nucleotide sequence data for ApSHMT are available in the DDBJ databases under the accession number AB695121. “
“Staphylococcus aureus is a versatile pathogen that can cause life-threatening infections. The growing emergence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus strains and a decrease in the discovery of new antibiotics warrant the search for new therapeutic targets to combat infections. Staphylococcus aureus produces many extracellular virulence factors that contribute to its pathogenicity. Therefore, targeting bacterial virulence as an alternative strategy to the development of new antimicrobials has gained great interest. α-Toxin is a 33.2-kDa, water-soluble, pore-forming toxin that is secreted by most S. aureus strains. α-Toxin is essential for the pathogenesis of pneumonia, as strains lacking α-toxin display a profound defect in virulence. In this report, we demonstrate that isoalantolactone (IAL), a naturally occurring compound found in Inula helenium (Compositae), has no anti-S. aureus activity as per MIC evaluation in vitro. However, IAL can markedly inhibit the expression of α-toxin in S. aureus at very low concentrations. Furthermore, the in vivo data indicate that treatment with IAL protects mice from S. aureus pneumonia.