THE results of hypophysectomy and of injection of extracts show that the gonads of Amphibia are under the control of the anterior lobe of the pituitary (Wolfe, 1929; Hogben, 1930). Xenopus laevis does not exhibit any sexual activity in the laboratory. When appropriate nutritive and other conditions are fulfilled (Landgrebe, 1939), the ovaries are close to the threshold of ovulation at all seaso...

The influence of postharvest fruit ripening in the composition of metabolites, transcripts and enzymes in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is poorly understood. The goal of this work was to study the changes in the metabolite composition of the tomato fruit ripened off-the-vine using the cultivar Micro-Tom as model system. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) was used for analysis of the ...

The composition and antibacterial activity of the essential oil of Levisticum officinale Koch at different developmental stages (flower, immature fruit, green mature fruit and ripened fruit) is reported. The essential oils were obtained by hydrodistillation of air-dried samples and their antibacterial activities were tested against seven bacteria. The yield of oil (w/w %) in different stages wa...

In the past fifty years, no recorded case of botulism has been attributed to surface ripened cheese (NIeyer and Eddie, 1950). When cheese spread was prepared from one type of surface ripened cheese, botulinum toxin was demonstrated in only one out of several million jars (Dauer, 1952). The fact that botulism was never observed with the original surface ripened cheese from which cheese spreads w...

After-ripening (AR) in Sisymbrium officinale seeds altered SoACS7, SoACO2, SoGA20ox2, SoGA3ox2, and SoGA2ox6 gene expression. Except for SoGA20ox2 expression, which sharply diminished, the expression of the other genes rose during development, particularly that of SoACS7. In contrast, only the SoACO2 and SoGA2ox6 transcripts increased with seed desiccation; the others decreased. AR increased th...

Animals, from insects to humans, select foods to regulate their acquisition of key nutrients in amounts and balances that maximise fitness. In species in which the nutrition of juveniles depends on parents, adults must make challenging foraging decisions that simultaneously address their own nutrient needs as well as those of their progeny. Here, we examined how the fruit fly Drosophila melanog...

Pu-erh is a tea produced in Yunnan, China by microbial fermentation of fresh Camellia sinensis leaves by two processes, the traditional raw fermentation and the faster, ripened fermentation. We characterized fungal and bacterial communities in leaves and both Pu-erhs by high-throughput, rDNA-amplicon sequencing and we characterized the profile of bioactive extrolite mycotoxins in Pu-erh teas by...

Activity and expression of polygalacturonase (PG), a hydrolytic enzyme involved in ultrastructural changes in the pericarp of sweet pepper (Capsicum annaum), were investigated at different ripening stages of the pepper cultivars Mandi and Talanduo. Molecular cloning of CaPG was carried out by constructing a cDNA library from three stages of fruit ripening. Morphological determination, PG ...

The importance of translational regulation during Arabidopsis seed germination has been shown previously. Here the role of transcriptional and translational regulation during seed imbibition of the very dormant DELAY OF GERMINATION 1 (DOG1) near-isogenic line was investigated. Polysome profiling was performed on dormant and after-ripened seeds imbibed for 6 and 24 h in water and in the transcri...