A Potential Explanation of a Positive Serum β-Glucan Assay in Mucormycosis To the Editor—I read with interest the nice study by Angebault et al [1] that gives a " real world " picture of the subop-timal performance of the serum β-glucan assay. Unexpectedly, the authors found that serum β-glucan test was positive in 3 of the 6 cases of mucormycosis in their series with no apparent cause of false...

The significance of AVR1-CO39, an avirulence gene of the blast fungus corresponding to Pi-CO39(t) in rice cultivars, during the evolution and differentiation of the blast fungus was evaluated by studying its function and distribution in Pyricularia spp. When the presence or absence of AVR1-CO39 was plotted on a dendrogram constructed from ribosomal DNA sequences, a perfect parallelism was obser...

The wild Oryza species are rich in genetic diversity and are good resources for modern breeding of rice varieties. The reliable ex situ conservation of various genetic resources supports both basic and applied rice research. For this purpose, we developed PCR-based and co-dominant insertion/deletion (INDEL) markers which enable the discrimination of the genome types or species in the genus Oryz...

Zearalenone (ZEN) and its phase II sulfate and glucoside metabolites have been detected in food and feed commodities. After consumption, the conjugates can be hydrolyzed by the human intestinal microbiota leading to liberation of ZEN that implies an underestimation of the true ZEN exposure. To include ZEN conjugates in routine analysis, reliable standards are needed, which are currently not ava...

Zygomycetes cause serious invasive infections, predominantly in immunocompromised and diabetic patients with poor prognoses and limited therapeutic options. We compared the antifungal function of human polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNLs) against hyphae of Rhizopus oryzae and R. microsporus, the most frequently isolated zygomycetes, with that against the less frequently isolated Absidia corymbi...

Polythene is considered as one of the important object used in daily life. Being versatile in nature and resistant to microbial attack, they effectively cause environmental pollution. In the present study, biodegradation of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) have been performed using fungal lab isolate Rhizopus oryzae NS5. Lab isolate fungal strain capable of adhering to LDPE surface was used for ...

This study aimed to assess microbial community diversity in recycled nutrient solutions used in soil-less glasshouse cultivation of tomato. One hundred bacterial strains, twenty oomycetes and 6 fungi were isolated and identified through genomic DNA isolation, PCR amplification of the ribosomal DNA region and database interrogations. Similarities of ITS regions with known species ranged from 95%...

background: physical characteristics of crops play an important role in designing the required machinery and apparatus for planting, harvesting, transport, processing and also storing. the aim of this study was to determine physical characteristics of some native rice varieties cultivated in northern iran, namely gerde, shafagh, tarom-e-hashemi, shiroodi and keshvari. methods: some geometrical,...