The Burkard Volumetric Spore Trap is a common and efficient instrument used to collect outdoor air samples. In North America, two slide counting methods have been widely used by aerobiologists: the single longitudinal traverse method and the twelve transverse traverse method. The purpose of this study was to compare the two counting methods by assessing fungal spore concentrations of ascospores...

Dairy farmers in many parts of the world rely on corn silage as a source of digestible fiber and readily fermentable energy for their cattle. In Florida, Georgia and many tropical countries, such farmers face several climatic challenges that can complicate corn silage production including temperatures that reduce the rate of photosynthesis (Crafts-Brandner and Salvucci, 2002) and reduction in p...

Rice false smut caused by Ustilaginoidea virens is one of the most important diseases of rice worldwide. Although its genome has been sequenced, to date there is no report on targeted gene deletion in U. virens and no molecular studies on genetic mechanisms regulating the infection processes of this destructive pathogen. In this study, we attempted to generate knockout mutants of the ortholog o...

Ustilago sphaerogena is a smut fungus which is parasitic on the grass Echinochloa crus-galli but may be cultured saprophytically in the sporidial stage of its life cycle. The form, rate of growth, and color of the sporidia were found (29) to be dependent upon the medium in which the fungus is grown. In a medium containing 2 % yeast extract and 2 % sucrose, large, rapidly growing pink sporidia w...

The molecular mechanisms regulating the accuracy of gene expression are still not fully understood. Among these mechanisms, Nonsense-mediated Decay (NMD) is a quality control process that detects post-transcriptionally abnormal transcripts and leads them to degradation. The UPF1 protein lays at the heart of NMD as shown by several structural and functional features reported for this factor main...

33 The microbial conversion of plant biomass to valuable products in a consolidated bioprocess 34 could greatly increase the ecologic and economic impact of a biorefinery. Current strategies 35 for hydrolysis of plant material mostly rely on the external application of carbohydrate-active 36 enzymes (CAZymes). Alternatively, production organisms can be engineered to secrete 37 CAZymes to reduce...

Sugarcane smut, caused by the fungus Sporisorium scitamineum, is one of the main diseases that affect sugarcane worldwide. In the present study, the cDNA-SRAP technique was used to identify genes that are likely to be involved in the response of sugarcane to S. scitamineum infection. In total, 21 bands with significant differential expression during cDNA-SRAP analysis were cloned and sequenced....

Global declines in biodiversity create an urgent need to address the impact of infectious disease in the small and fragmented populations that characterize threatened species. However, the paucity of empirical data provides little ability to predict whether disease generally accelerates threatened species towards extinction or becomes less important as populations decline. Th is study tests whe...

Climate warming is predicted to increase the frequency of invasions by pathogens and to cause the large-scale redistribution of native host species, with dramatic consequences on the health of domesticated and wild populations of plants and animals. The study of historic range shifts in response to climate change, such as during interglacial cycles, can help in the prediction of the routes and ...

To study genetic effects of habitat fragmentation on plant performance and plant response to biotic interactions, we performed a greenhouse study with plants from 27 populations of the common plant Lychnis flos-cuculi differing in size, isolation, and microsatellite heterozygosity. We germinated seeds of 449 plants and grew up to nine offspring per maternal plant in single pots assigned to a fa...