Commercially available medicinal plant extracts such as Ginkgo biloba leaf extract show no consistent pattern of clinical benefit for people with dementia or cognitive impairment, and have been suggested to be toxic to cells at higher doses. However, medicinal plants may contain other more efficient bioactive molecules apart from the well-known flavonoids and terpenoids. Recombinant therapeutic...

In plant chloroplasts two superoxide dismutase (SOD) activities occur, FeSOD and Cu/ZnSOD, with reciprocal regulation in response to copper availability. This system presents a unique model to study the regulation of metal-cofactor delivery to an organelle. The Arabidopsis thaliana gene AtCCS encodes a functional homolog to yeast Ccs1p/Lys7p, a copper chaperone for SOD. The AtCCS protein was lo...

Pathogen effectors are virulence factors causing plant diseases. How the host targets of these effectors facilitate pathogen infection is largely unknown. An effector of Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae (Xoo) transcriptionally activates rice (Oryza sativa) susceptibility gene Xa13 to cause bacterial blight disease. Xa13 encodes an indispensable plasma membrane protein of the MtN3/saliva family, whi...

Pathogen effectors are virulence factors causing plant diseases. How the host targets of these effectors facilitate pathogen infection is largely unknown. An effector of Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae (Xoo) transcriptionally activates rice (Oryza sativa) susceptibility gene Xa13 to cause bacterial blight disease. Xa13 encodes an indispensable plasma membrane protein of the MtN3/saliva family, whi...

Spirotetramat (Movento®) is a systemic insecticide that is used to control scale insects on kiwifruit. The use of protectant copper sprays on kiwifruit has become increasingly common due to the bacterial disease Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae. This study investigated the interaction of copper with spirotetramat and how it influenced the uptake and translocation of spirotetramat within the ...

BACKGROUND Glutamine synthetase (GS) plays a central role in plant nitrogen assimilation, a process intimately linked to soil water availability. We previously showed that hybrid poplar (Populus tremula X alba, INRA 717-1B4) expressing ectopically a pine cytosolic glutamine synthetase gene (GS1a) display enhanced tolerance to drought. Preliminary transcriptome profiling revealed that during dro...

A case history of acute copper toxicity in a flock of Garole sheep has been presented. The animals which suffered from the toxicity were fed solely on leaves of mahogany plant for two days prior to the onset of the symptoms. The soil in the region of West Bengal is deficient in both zinc and molybdenum, which may have caused copper imbalance in the animals. Serum biochemical and postmortem find...

Methods: Pigs (n = 6024) were randomly distributed into four blocks of two barns per block and allotted within block to diets with either Normal (industry levels) or Reduced TM supplementation. Growth performance was measured for each barn, and individual carcass characteristics were recorded at a commercial packing plant. Fecal samples randomly obtained from at least eight pigs per barn were a...