1 Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi, United States of America, 2 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, United States of America, 3 Department of Chemistry and Center for Biomolecular Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, United States of America, 4 Department ...

BACKGROUND The grapevine is a widely cultivated crop and a high number of different varieties have been selected since its domestication in the Neolithic period. Although sexual crossing has been a major driver of grapevine evolution, its vegetative propagation enhanced the impact of somatic mutations and has been important for grapevine diversity. Transposable elements are known to be major co...

Subtilisin-like proteases, also known as subtilases, are a very diverse family of serine peptidases present in many organisms. In grapevine, there are hints of the involvement of subtilases in defense mechanisms, but their role is not yet understood. The first characterization of the subtilase gene family was performed in 2014. However, simultaneously, the grapevine genome was re-annotated and ...

On San Miguel, one of the smallest of the 7 000 islands of the Philippines, a few coconut palms were slowly dying in 1928. Ten years later, 50 000 palms on this island were dead or dying. The disease seemed to be limited to a certain area and affected only coconut palms. No bacteria or fungi were found to be associated with the dying palms. The disease, believed to be caused by a virus, began t...

The sequence of the 356 nucleotide residues of chrysanthemum stunt viroid (CSV) has been determined. Overlapping linear viroid fragments were obtained by partial ribonuclease digestion, radiolabelled in vitro at their 5'-ends, and sequenced using partial enzymic cleavage methods. Of the CSV sequence, 69% is contained in the published sequence of potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTV). Differences i...