This is a case report of Bipolaris spicifera, a dematiaceous fungus commonly found in soil and as a plant pathogen, isolated from culture of the lesions and from an excisional biopsy specimen in a patient with diabetes and alcohol abuse. This case highlights the importance of considering Bipolaris as a differential diagnosis in patients with cutaneous lesions and the need for vigorous managemen...

Phaeohyphomycosis (PHM) is a term used to describe any fungus presenting in tissues with pseudohyphae, hyphae, brown yeast-like cells or a combination of these forms. Sinusitis and skin infections are the most common presentation of subcutaneous PHM caused by the fungus Bipolaris spicifera. However, the majority of cases have so far been encountered in tropical climatic zones. The present study...

A severe leaf spot, turning to foliage blight, was observed on leaves of Maranta leuconeura growing in a garden in Brazil (state of Rio de Janeiro) in 2015. A dematiaceous hyphomycete bearing a morphology typical of a helminthosporoid fungi was regularly found in association with diseased tissues. The fungus was isolated and pathogenicity was demonstrated through the completion of Koch's postul...

In the present study, six species of Bipolaris viz. B. heveae, B. neergaardii, B. papendrofii, B. zeae, B. oryzae, and B. australiensis and two species of Curvularia viz. C. intermedia and C. heteropogonicola were identified on graminicolous species. Bipolaris heveae on Echinochloa sp., Cynodon dactylon and Arundo sp., B. neergaardii on Oryza sativa, B. papendrofii on Saccharum officinarum and ...

Stenocarpella maydis is a fungal pathogen of major importance that causes a dry-rot of maize ears and is associated with a neuromycotoxicosis in cattle grazing harvested maize fields in southern Africa and Argentina. In an effort to investigate the potential roles of S. maydis metabolites in the fungal disease cycle, ethyl acetate extracts of solid-substrate fermentations of several S. maydis i...

The maintenance of an intimate interaction between plant-biotrophic fungi and their hosts over evolutionary times involves strong selection and adaptative evolution of virulence-related genes. The highly specialised maize pathogen Ustilago maydis is assigned with a high evolutionary capability to overcome host resistances due to its high rates of sexual recombination, large population sizes and...

In this study, we sought to determine whether the increases in peroxidase activity and electrolyte leakage induced in maize (Zea mays L.) leaves by sodium bisulfite were causally related to the sodium bisulfite-induced increases in sporulation of the pathogen Bipolaris maydis race T on infected maize leaves. Pretreatment of detached leaves of maize inbred W64 A with sodium bisulfite (500 |ig/ml...

The fungal pathogen Cochliobolus carbonum (anamorph, Bipolaris zeicola) causes Northern Leaf Spot, leading to a ubiquitous and devastating foliar disease of corn in Yunnan Province, China. Asexual spores (conidia) play a major role in both epidemics and pathogenesis of Northern Leaf Spot, but the molecular mechanism of conidiation in C. carbonum has remained elusive. Here, using a map-based clo...