Thin sections of petrified fossils made during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to investigate the internal tissue systems of plants now provide an important new source of information on associated micro-organisms. We report a new heterokont eukaryote (Combresomyces williamsonii sp. nov.) based on exquisitely preserved fossil oogonia, antheridia and hyphae from th...

Fungi and oomycetes that colonize living plant tissue form extensive interfaces with plant cells in which the cytoplasm of the microorganism is closely aligned with the host cytoplasm for an extended distance. In all cases, specialized biotrophic hyphae function to hijack host cellular processes across an interfacial zone consisting of a hyphal plasma membrane, a specialized interfacial matrix,...

Plant pathogenic oomycetes secrete a diverse repertoire of effector proteins that modulate host innate immunity and enable parasitic infection. Understanding how effectors evolve, translocate and traffic inside host cells, and perturb host processes are major themes in the study of oomycete-plant interactions. The last year has seen important progress in the study of oomycete effectors with, no...

The Oomycota include many economically significant microbial pathogens of crop species. Understanding the mechanisms by which oomycetes infect plants and identifying methods to provide durable resistance are major research goals. Over the last few years, many elicitors that trigger plant immunity have been identified, as well as host genes that mediate susceptibility to oomycete pathogens. The ...

A variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by Ceratocystis fimbriata have strong bioactivity against a wide range of fungi, bacteria and oomycetes. Mycelial growth, conidial production, and spore germination of fungi and oomycetes were significantly inhibited after exposure to cultures of C. fimbriata, and colony formation of bacteria was also inhibited. Two post-harvest diseases, ...

We describe here a new RNA virus (PserNV1) from the plant protist parasite Phytomonas serpens (family Trypanosomatidae, Kinetoplastida, supergroup Excavata). The properties of PserNV1 permit assignment to the genus Narnavirus (Narnaviridae), the first reported from a host other than fungi or oomycetes.

We report here the whole-genome shotgun sequence of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain UASWS BA1, isolated from inner wood tissues of a decaying Platanus × acerifolia tree. This strain proved to be antagonistic to several plant pathogenic fungi and oomycetes and can be developed as a biological control agent in agriculture.