Human cytomegalovirus (CMV) remains the most common infection affecting organ transplant recipients. Despite advances in the prophylaxis and acute treatment of CMV, it remains an important pathogen affecting the short- and long-term clinical outcome of solid organ transplant recipient. The emergence of CMV resistance in a patient reduces the clinical efficacy of antiviral therapy, complicates t...

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans responds to pathogenic bacteria with conserved innate immune responses and pathogen avoidance behaviors. We investigated natural variation in C. elegans resistance to pathogen infection. With the use of quantitative genetic analysis, we determined that the pathogen susceptibility difference between the laboratory wild-type strain N2 and the wild isolate CB485...

Surprising regularities in the distribution of nucleotides and pairs of nucleotides along the genomes of both prokaryotes and eukaryotes become evident when converting nucleotide sequences from symbolic to digital form. These regularities make the structure of a genome be less like that of a "plain text", which simply conveys a semantics in accordance to a grammar, and more like that of a "poem...

| 5 Abstract Developing high yielding and high quality varieties with broad-spectrum and durable disease resistance is the ultimate goal of crop breeding. Resistance (R) genes encoding proteins with nucleotide-binding site (NBS) and leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domains provide high levels of resistance, but this type of R genes usually only confers resistance to a subset of pathogen races. In addi...

The aim of the present study was to scrutinize the response of banana (Grand Naine variety) plants when interacting with dead or live pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense, a causative agent of Panama disease. Response of plants was evaluated in terms of induction of defense-related marker enzyme activity, namely, peroxidase (POX), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), β-1,3 glucanase, chitinase, and ...

The triphosphate tunnel metalloenzyme (TTM) superfamily represents a group of enzymes that is characterized by their ability to hydrolyze a range of tripolyphosphate substrates. Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) encodes three TTM genes, AtTTM1, AtTTM2, and AtTTM3. Although AtTTM3 has previously been reported to have tripolyphosphatase activity, recombinantly expressed AtTTM2 unexpectedly exhib...

Reliable and sensitive quantification of Phytophthorainfestansin potato plant is of crucial importance in managing the multiple syndromes caused by this pathogen. A Real-Time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was developed for the determination of P.infestans in host tissues. DNA levels of a highly virulent isolate were measured in different potato cultivars with varying degrees of resistan...

Plant disease is a major challenge to agriculture worldwide, and it is exacerbated by abiotic environmental factors. During some plant-pathogen interactions, heat stress allows pathogens to overcome host resistance, a phenomenon which could severely impact crop productivity considering the global warming trends associated with climate change. Despite the importance of this phenomenon, little is...

Pathogen derived resistance (PDR) refers to using sequences from a pathogen to protect the host from the effects of the pathogen (Sanford and Johnson, 1985). Following the first example of coat protein (CP)-mediated resistance, a type of PDR, to protect transgenic tobacco plants from infection by tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) (Powell-Abel et al., 1986) there have been many reports of different typ...

Phytoalexins are low molecular weight antimicrobial compounds that are synthesized in response to pathogen attack. The phytoalexin camalexin, an indole derivative, is produced by Arabidopsis in response to infection with the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae. The phytoalexin deficient 3 ( pad3 ) mutation, which causes a defect in camalexin production, has no effect on resistance to P. syr...