The emergence of new microbial pathogens can result in destructive outbreaks, since their hosts have limited resistance and pathogens may be excessively aggressive. Described as the major ecological incident of the twentieth century, Dutch elm disease, caused by ascomycete fungi from the Ophiostoma genus, has caused a significant decline in elm tree populations (Ulmus sp.) in North America and ...

The Canadian Ophiostoma Genome Project, which was initiated in 2001, is a collaborative effort between research teams in four different universities. Its general objective is to conduct a large-scale identification and analysis of genes controlling important aspects of the life cycle of Ophiostomatoid fungi. To this end, several expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries were obtained for the Dutch...

The health condition of the population of elms in the region of southern Bohemia was studied from the viewpoint of their decline, the occurrence of Dutch Elm Disease (DED) and the presence of other diseases. Of the total number of 105 elms in total 33 of them were without any symptoms of the disease or other damage. Elms regenerated quite spontaneously in the neighbourhood of mother trees and t...

An investigation was carried out in some areas of Golestan Province including: Loveh forest, Soosara, Daland forest park, Tooskestan; Gilan Province including Siahkal and Asalem forests; Arasbaran and landscape of urban trees during 1999–2007. In this investigation, based on some morphological, physiological and molecular characteristics and also comparison with standard isolates two species Op...

Dutch elm disease is caused by the fungal pathogen Ophiostoma novo-ulmi which is transmitted by the native elm bark beetle, Hylurgopinus rufipes. We have found that four semiochemicals (the monoterpene (-)-beta-pinene and the sesquiterpenes (-)-alpha-cubebene, (+)-spiroaxa-5,7-diene and (+)-delta-cadinene) from diseased American elms, Ulmus americana, synergistically attract H. rufipes, and tha...

The Ophiostoma piceae complex forms a monophyletic group of insect-dispersed pyrenomycetes with synnemata (Pesotum) and micronematous (Sporothrix) synanamorphs. Other species of Ophiostoma outside of the 0. piceae complex that form synnemata lack the Sporothrix state. The nine recognized species within the 0. piceae complex are delimited by synnema morphology, growth rate at 32 C, mating reacti...

BERBEE, M. L., AND TAYLOR, J. W. 1992. 18s ribosomal RNA gene sequence characters place the human pathogen Sporothrix schenckii in the genus Ophiostoma. Experimental Mycology 16, 87-91. Using the sequence of the gene for the 18s subunit of ribosomal RNA, we show that the asexual human pathogen Sporothrix schenckii lies phylogeneticaily within the sexual genus Ophiostoma. By distance or maximum ...