The genus Abiotrophia currently includes four species, Abiotrophia defectiva, Abiotrophia adiacens, Abiotrophia balaenopterae and Abiotrophia elegans. Recent 16S rRNA gene sequencing studies have demonstrated that the genus is not monophyletic and is in need of taxonomic revision. Phylogenetically, the genus Abiotrophia consists of two distinct lines, A. defectiva, the type species of the genus...

Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism, we have prepared cell-free extracts which accurately transcribe cloned homologous 5S RNA genes in vitro. These extracts also transcribe cloned tRNA genes, and actively process the resulting products. Unlike tRNA genes, transcription of 5S DNA shows some species specificity: C. elegans extracts do not transcribe Xenopus 5S RNA genes,...

Egg laying is an important phase of the life cycle of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). Previous studies examined egg-laying events manually. This paper presents a method for automatic detection of egg-laying onset using deformable template matching and other morphological image analysis techniques. Some behavioral changes surrounding egg-laying events are also studied. The resu...

A Mariannaea fungus was isolated during investigation of an elm tree infested with unidentified beetles. Based on morphological characteristics and molecular analysis of the internal transcribed spacer rDNA sequence, the fungus was identified as Mariannaea elegans var. elegans. Fungal growth was better on malt extract agar than on potato dextrose agar and oatmeal agar. Optimal temperature and p...

Four Chinese Chrysis species-groups, the antennata, capitalis, elegans, and maculicornis species-groups, are discussed. Chrysis lapislazulina Rosa & Xu, sp. n. is described in the elegans species-group; and three species, C. brachyceras Bischoff, 1910, C. subdistincta Linsenmaier, 1968 and C. yoshikawai Tsuneki, 1961, are reported for the first time from China in other species-groups. A new syn...

C. elegans, both in the wild and in the lab, live on a diet of live bacteria. The bacterial diet provides nutrients for C. elegans, but can also play a number of other roles in C. elegans physiology. Recently, we compared the effects of different bacterial diets on life history traits and gene expression. Here, we discuss our recent findings in the context of other dietary studies and highlight...

Programmed cell death (PCD) in mammals has been implicated in several disease states including cancer, autoimmune disease, and neurodegenerative disease. In Caenorhabditis elegans, PCD is a normal component of development. We find that Salmonella typhimurium colonization of the C. elegans intestine leads to an increased level of cell death in the worm gonad. S. typhimurium-mediated germ-line ce...

Comparative analysis between Caenorhabditis elegans and other nematode species offers a powerful approach to study gene function. C. elegans also has great potential as a surrogate expression system to study the function of genes from parasitic nematode species where transgenic methodologies are unavailable. However there is little information on the extent to which the biology of C. elegans is...

Glycobiology research with Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) has benefitted from the numerous genetic and cell biology tools available in this system. However, the lack of a cell line and the relative inaccessibility of C. elegans somatic cells in vivo have limited the biochemical approaches available in this model. Here we report that C. elegans primary embryonic cells in culture incorporate...

Some 340 isolates belonging to Mucorales, obtained from rhizosphere of root knot nematode host plants in ChaharMahal & BakhtiariProvince, were studied during 2003-5. Fourteen new taxa, namely, Absidia spinosa, Actinomucor elegans, Cunninghamella echinulata var. echinulata, C. echinulata var. nodosa, C. echinulata var. verticillata, Mucor circinelloides f. circinelloides, M. circinelloides f. lu...