Figure 3

Muscle contraction of the silkworm induced by peanut TAGs. (a) The (purified) peanut TAGs dose-dependently showed a muscle contraction effect on the silkworm. The y-axis represents the contraction (C-) value, and the x-axis represents the dosage (mg/larva). Each plot represents a result from one silkworm specimen. Calculation procedure of C-values is described in “Materials and Methods”. (b) A representative photo from the muscle contraction assay using the silkworm. Either the peanut TAGs (17 mg), the vehicle (water), or the yeast β-glucan (4.0 mg) was injected to the silkworm specimen. As shown in the figure, the peanut TAG and the yeast β-glucan induced the muscle contraction, while the vehicle did not. (c) The muscle contraction inducing activity co-migrated with the TLC spot. Thirty milligrams of the purified peanut TAG (as shown in Fig. 2a) was separated on the TLC and re-extracted. When re-extracted, the substance in the major spot on the TLC (fraction 4 as shown in the bottom panel) induced the muscle contraction. The y-axis of the top panel represents the C-value in the muscle contraction assay. The mean value and the standard deviation obtained from duplicate measurements are shown in the chart.