Sphaeropsis sapinea is an endophyte and latent pathogen of pines, assumedly introduced to the Southern Hemisphere along with its host. There are at least three recognised forms of S. sapinea that differ from each other morphologically and can also be separated based on molecular characteristics. Pinus radiata is a native to California but has been used extensively for afforestation in the South...

BACKGROUND The genotypic diversity and cariogenicity of C. albicans from the dental plaque of children are poorly understood. This study aimed to explore the genotypic diversity and cariogenicity of C. albicans from children with early childhood caries and caries-free children. METHODS Dental plaque samples from 238 children with early childhood caries and from 125 caries-free children were c...

Early childhood caries is a complex health care issue that has a multifactorial etiology. One aspect of this etiology is the colonization and propagation of acidogenic bacteria at an early age. There have been several bacterial species associated with caries but 1 common species is Streptococcus mutans. Here, we describe genotypic diversity and commonality of Streptococcus mutans recovered from...

Transgenic crops able to tolerate environmental stress are being developed throughout the world. However, little data is available on the impact of environmental stress-tolerant transgenic crops on soil microorganisms and biochemistry. Recently developed transgenic potato plants carrying an environmental stress-related gene, DREB1A, with a stress-inducible promoter, are being evaluated for grow...

An objective of transfer learning is to improve and speedup learning on target tasks after training on a different, but related source tasks. This research is a study of comparative Neuro-Evolution (NE) methods for transferring evolved multi-agent policies (behaviors) between multi-agent tasks of varying complexity. The efficacy of five variants of two NE methods are compared for multi-agent po...

HIV-HBV infected patients require optimal control of viral replication in order to prevent severe comorbidities, such as liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The genetic diversity of HBV is a poorly investigated factor of such viral replication in HIV-infected hosts. HBV genome diversity can be differentiated in two major aspects: genotypic and phenotypic. Genotypic diversity is more r...

Yersinia enterocolitica is an important foodborne pathogen, and pigs are recognized as a major reservoir and potential source of pathogenic strains to humans. A total of 172 Y. enterocolitica recovered from conventional and antimicrobial-free pig production systems from different geographic regions (North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa) were investigated to determine their pathog...

A common member of the intestinal microbiota in humans and animals is Escherichia coli. Based on the presence of virulence factors, E. coli can be potentially pathogenic. The focus of this study was to isolate E. coli from untreated surface waters (37 sites) in Illinois and Missouri and determine phenotypic and genotypic diversity among isolates. Water samples positive for fecal coliforms based...

It is critical to incorporate the process of population dynamics into community genetics studies to identify the mechanisms of the linkage between host plant genetics and associated communities. We studied the effects of plant genotypic diversity of tall goldenrod Solidago altissima on the population dynamics of the aphid Uroleucon nigrotuberculatum. We found genotypic variation in plant resist...

The genotypic diversity of antibiotic-producing Pseudomonas spp. provides an enormous resource for identifying strains that are highly rhizosphere competent and superior for biological control of plant diseases. In this study, a simple and rapid method was developed to determine the presence and genotypic diversity of 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (DAPG)-producing Pseudomonas strains in rhizospher...