Identifying the genes underlying adaptation, their distribution in genomes and the evolutionary forces shaping genomic diversity are key challenges in evolutionary biology. Very few studies have investigated the abundance and distribution of selective sweeps in species with high-quality reference genomes, outside a handful of model species. Pathogenic fungi are tractable eukaryote models for in...

IN examining various groups of plants, in the hope of finding one which would throw fresh light on the question of sex determination, the dioecious forms of Lychnis suggested themselves as being particularly suitable. The genus Lychnis, as a whole, is hermaphrodite, and even the dioecious species may readily exhibit this character. In the female flower rudiments of stamens are always present an...

Photophoretic trapping-Raman spectroscopy (PTRS) is a new technique for measuring Raman spectra of particles that are held in air using photophoretic forces. It was initially demonstrated with Raman spectra of strongly-absorbing carbon nanoparticles (Pan et al. [44] (Opt Express 2012)). In the present paper we report the first demonstration of the use of PTRS to measure Raman spectra of absorbi...

Plant pathogenic fungi cause massive yield losses and affect both quality and safety of food and feed produced from infected plants. The main objective of plant pathogenic fungi is to get access to the organic carbon sources of their carbon-autotrophic hosts. However, the chemical nature of the carbon source(s) and the mode of uptake are largely unknown. Here, we present a novel, plasma membran...

Here, we identified a new member of the Fizzy-related family of APC activators, Cru1, which is required for virulence in the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis. We show that Cru1 promotes the degradation of B-type cyclins in U. maydis. Cells deficient in the Cru1 protein show defects in cell size, adaptation to nutritional conditions and cell separation. We propose that the phenotypes observed ar...

Genetic mapping of a South African sugarcane cross, the AA40 population, was initiated with the ultimate aim of being able to identify genetic markers linked to important traits. This population is derived from a routine cross in the SASEX plant breeding programme, and was selected for mapping purposes due to the good segregation observed for various traits, for example resistance to diseases s...

Endophytic bacteria were isolated from the stalks of sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum, growing in Papua New Guinea. Endophytic bacterial communities from extracted juice averaged 6x 10 cfu/ml, which is 25 times greater than the number of endophytic bacteria found in commercial varieties in South Africa. Sixty isolates, representing the different colony morphology types, were used for in vitro i...

We report the development of 60 microsatellite markers on four species of the fungal complex Microbotryum, causing anther smut of the Caryophyllaceae. Microsatellites were found in four expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries, built from isolates of M. lychnis-dioicae, M. violaceum sensus stricto, M. lagerheimii and M. dianthorum, collected, respectively, from the plants Silene latifolia, S. nut...

Differential gene expression in sugarcane during sugarcane-Ustilago scitaminea interaction was conducted in a smut-resistant genotype. Using cDNA-AFLP along with silver staining, a total of 136 transcript-derived fragments (TDFs) were found to be differentially expressed in response to challenge by U. scitaminea. Forty TDFs, 34 newly induced plus six with obvious upregulated expression after in...

Once a pathogen, always a pathogen? Not so—the fungus Pseudozyma flocculosa provides an intriguing example of a pathogen that took a different route (reviewed in Bélanger et al., 2012). Initially isolated from a powdery-mildew–infected leaf, P. flocculosa acts as a strong antagonist of powdery mildews (Erysiphales) and was thus developed as a biocontrol agent. However, the mechanism by which it...