The corn smut fungus, Ustilago maydis, is a global pathogen responsible for extensive agricultural losses. Control of corn smut using traditional breeding has met with limited success because natural resistance to U. maydis is organ specific and involves numerous maize genes. Here, we present a transgenic approach by constitutively expressing the Totivirus antifungal protein KP4, in maize. Tran...

Currently, the monophyletic lineage of anther smuts on Caryophyllaceae includes 22 species classified in the genus Microbotryum. They are model organisms studied in many disciplines of fungal biology. A molecular phylogenetic approach was used to resolve species boundaries within the caryophyllaceous anther smuts, as species delimitation based solely on phenotypic characters was problematic. Se...

BACKGROUND Students spend a large portion of their day in classrooms which may be a source of mold exposure. We examined the diversity and concentrations of molds in inner-city schools and described differences between classrooms within the same school. METHODS Classroom airborne mold spores, collected over a 2 day period, were measured twice during the school year by direct microscopy. RES...

Dioecious plants in the Caryophyllaceae family are susceptible to infection by members of the anthericolous smut fungi. In our studies of the Silene latifolia/Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae pathosystem, we were interested in characterizing the plant-pathogen interaction at the molecular level before and during teliosporogenesis. This takes place during floral bud development, and we hoped to ca...

The nutrition and metabolism of aphids are of interest to biochemists, since these important pests depend upon leaf cell sap for their nutrition and excrete large amounts of carbohydrate and amino acids (1, 2). This suggests that they may have some special nutritional requirements (3), and that their carbohydrate metabolism may possess unusual features. The evidence obtained to date indicates t...

Sex expression of dioecious buffalograss [Bouteloua dactyloides Columbus (syn. Buchloë dactyloides (Nutt.) Engelm.)] is known to be environmentally stable with approximate 1:1, male to female, sex ratios. Here we show that infection by the pistil smut fungus [Salmacisia buchloëana Huff & Chandra (syn. Tilletia buchloëana Kellerman and Swingle)] shifts sex ratios of buffalograss to be nearly...

A simple and rapid method for the detection of Tilletia horrida, the causal agent of rice kernel smut, in rice seeds is developed based on specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR). To design the specific primers for the detection of T. horrida, partial sequences of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) DNA region of T. horrida, T. controversa, T. walkeri, T. ehrhartae, T. indica and T. caries were ...

The development of new alternative platforms for subunit vaccine production is a priority in the biomedical field. In this study, Ustilago maydis, the causal agent of common corn smut or 'huitlacoche'has been genetically engineered to assess expression and immunogenicity of the B subunit of the cholera toxin (CTB), a relevant immunomodulatory agent in vaccinology. An oligomeric CTB recombinant ...

Unconventional secretion of proteins in eukaryotes is characterized by the circumvention of the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER). As a consequence proteins exported by unconventional pathways lack N-glycosylation, a post-transcriptional modification that is initiated in the ER during classical secretion. We are exploiting the well-established enzyme β-glucuronidase (GUS) to assay unconventional prote...

Dimorphic mating-type chromosomes in fungi are excellent models for understanding the genomic consequences of recombination suppression. Their suppressed recombination and reduced effective population size are expected to limit the efficacy of natural selection, leading to genomic degeneration. Our aim was to identify the sequences of the mating-type chromosomes (a1 and a2) of the anther-smut f...