The importance of strigolactones in plant biology prompted us to synthesize simplified strigolactone mimics effective as exogenous signals for rhizosphere organisms. New strigolactone mimics easily derived from simple and available starting materials in significant amounts were prepared and fully characterized. These compounds contain an aromatic or heterocyclic ring, usually present in various...

Mycology is changing as an era of extensive genome sequencing comes of age and provides vital information that enables questions to be addressed about fungi in all the major taxonomic groups. As technology transfer facilitates what was once only possible for a very small number of model species, it becomes possible to explore the biology and biodiversity of fungi as a whole. The availability of...

BACKGROUND Endophytic fungi, which have been reported in numerous plant species, are important components of the forest community and contribute significantly to the diversity of natural ecosystems. OBJECTIVES The current study aimed to evaluate and characterize, at the molecular level, the diversity and antimicrobial activities of endophytic fungi from medicinal plants in Saudi Arabia. MAT...

Plant roots can establish associations with neutral, beneficial and pathogenic groups of soil organisms. Although it has been recognized from the study of individual isolates that these associations are individually important for plant growth, little is known about interactions of whole assemblages of beneficial and pathogenic microorganisms associating with plants.We investigated the influence...

Fungi occupy every inhabitable ecological niche on earth [1]. Environmental requirements vary, from species with very specific ones to species that can live under a broad range of conditions. Pathogenic fungi are those species that occupy and derive nutrients from living organisms. Some fungal pathogens completely depend on their host, while others can prosper in additional environments. Fungal...

In vitro studies with Trichoderma spp., soil-borne fungal antagonists, demonstrated that a number of isolates produced volatile and non-volatile metabolites capable of inhibiting the growth and sporulation of several soil-borne plant pathogenic fungi. Microscopic observations showed that T. harzianm and T. viride, isolated from soil samples from Ahwaz and Karaj, adversely affected the myce...

BACKGROUND Agrobacterium tumefaciens has long been known to transform plant tissue in nature as part of its infection process. This natural mechanism has been utilised over the last few decades in laboratories world wide to genetically manipulate many species of plants. More recently this technology has been successfully applied to non-plant organisms in the laboratory, including fungi, where t...

Oligosaccharide elicitors from pathogens have been shown to play major roles in host plant defense responses involving plant-pathogen chemoperception and interaction. In the present study, chitosan and oligochitosan were prepared from pathogen Fusarium sambucinum, and their effects on infection of Zanthoxylum bungeanum stems were investigated. Results showed that oligochitosan inhibited the inf...

A limited number of fungi can cause wilting disease in plants through colonization of the vascular system, the most well-known being Verticillium dahliae and Fusarium oxysporum. Like all pathogenic microorganisms, vascular wilt fungi secrete proteins during host colonization. Whole-genome sequencing and proteomics screens have identified many of these proteins, including small, usually cysteine...

The aim of this study was to identify the endophytic fungi from medicinal plant Ricinus communis and to investigate their potential antibacterial activity. 10 fungal species of endophytic fungi were successfully isolated from Ricinus communis including Aspergillus fumigates, Aspergillus japonicas, Aspergillus niger, Fusarium semitectum, Curvularia pallescens, Phoma hedericola, Alternaria tenuis...