The wheat pathogen Stagonospora nodorum, causal organism of the wheat disease Stagonospora nodorum blotch, has emerged as a model for the Dothideomycetes, a large fungal taxon that includes many important plant pathogens. The initial annotation of the genome assembly included 16,586 nuclear gene models. These gene models were used to design a microarray that has been interrogated with labelled ...

............................................................................................................6 Introduction ..........................................................................................7 Cellulosic ethanol overview........................................................................9 Genetic manipulation of biomass feedstock...........................................

The ability to move DNA into an organism and thereby alter its phenotype is central to both basic and applied molecular biology. Transformation is a simple task with Escherichia coli or Saccharomyces cerevisiae, but is usually more difficult with multicellular eukaryotes and can be particularly challenging with some important plant species. However, for Arabidopsis, in planta transformation met...

Pantoea stewartii subsp. stewartii is a bacterial phytopathogen that causes Stewart's wilt disease in corn. It uses quorum sensing to regulate expression of some genes involved in virulence in a cell density-dependent manner as the bacterial population grows from small numbers at the initial infection site in the leaf apoplast to high cell numbers in the xylem where it forms a biofilm. There ar...

XopN is a virulence factor from Xanthomonas campestris pathovar vesicatoria (Xcv) that is translocated into tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) leaf cells by the pathogen's type III secretion system. Xcv DeltaxopN mutants are impaired in growth and have reduced ability to elicit disease symptoms in susceptible tomato leaves. We show that XopN action in planta reduced pathogen-associated molecular pat...

Xanthomonas citri pv. citri is a clonal group of strains that causes citrus canker disease and appears to have originated in Asia. A phylogenetically distinct clonal group that causes identical disease symptoms on susceptible citrus, X. citri pv. aurantifolii, arose more recently in South America. Genomes of X. citri pv. aurantifolii strains carry two DNA fragments that hybridize to pthA, an X....

Steroid hormones alter dendritic architecture in many animals, but the exact relationship between dendritic anatomy, synaptic strength, and behavioral expression is typically unknown. In larvae of the moth Manduca sexta, the tip of each abdominal proleg (locomotory appendage) bears an array of mechanosensory hairs, each innervated by a planta hair sensory neuron (PH-SN). In the CNS, PH-SN axons...

Non-cellulosic cell wall polysaccharides constitute approximately one quarter of usable biomass for human exploitation. In contrast to cellulose, these components are usually substituted by O-acetyl groups, which affect their properties and interactions with other polymers, thus affecting their solubility and extractability. However, details of these interactions are still largely obscure. More...

HopQ1 (for Hrp outer protein Q), a type III effector secreted by Pseudomonas syringae pv phaseolicola, is widely conserved among diverse genera of plant bacteria. It promotes the development of halo blight in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). However, when this same effector is injected into Nicotiana benthamiana cells, it is recognized by the immune system and prevents infection. Although the ...