Given that infection-induced production of the IM1 transcript is exclusively dependent on the Toll receptor ligand Spz (De Gregorio et al. 2001, 2002), and that the transcript does not contain binding sites for miR-277 in its 3′-UTR or ORF, it seems most likely that Toll signaling is overactive in the absence of miR-277; this implies that the miRNA functions to reduce signaling through the pathway. Here, TLR4 is linked to infection.