Search results for "MICROBIOLOGY"
showing 6 items of 7546 documents
Endophytic Fungi in Asymptomatic Vitis vinifera L. and their Effects on Plasmopara viticola
2016
During a multi-year study on the life cycle of Plasmopara viticola to assess the typical epidemiology of downy mildew on grapevine (Vitis vinifera) in west Sicily (Italy), several leaves on which the downy mildew had collapsed were found and observed in a vineyard located in Marsala, in Trapani Province. An antagonistic fungus was isolated from these leaves and named A20; through its morphology, it was identified as a hyphomycete belonging to the genus Acremonium. The antagonism of A20 against the asexual and sexual spores of P. viticola, as well as endophytic nature of the genus Acremonium in V. vinifera were confirmed by further studies which have been carried out over the past decade. In…
Characterization of the "viable but nonculturable" (VBNC) state in the wine spoilage yeast Brettanomyces.
2012
Although the viable but not culturable (VBNC) state has been studied in detail in bacteria, it has been suggested that maintenance of viability with loss of culturability also exists in eukaryotic cells, such as in the wine spoilage yeast Brettanomyces. To provide conclusive evidence for the existence of a VBNC state in this yeast, we investigated its capacity to become viable and nonculturable after sulfite stress, and its ability to recover culturability after stressor removal. Sulfite addition induced loss of culturability but maintenance of viability. Increasing the medium pH to decrease the concentration of toxic SO(2) allowed yeast cells to become culturable again, thus demonstrating …
A New Phylogenetic Framework for the Animal-Adapted
2018
Tuberculosis (TB) affects humans and other animals and is caused by bacteria from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Previous studies have shown that there are at least nine members of the MTBC infecting animals other than humans; these have also been referred to as ecotypes. However, the ecology and the evolution of these animal-adapted MTBC ecotypes are poorly understood. Here we screened 12,886 publicly available MTBC genomes and newly sequenced 17 animal-adapted MTBC strains, gathering a total of 529 genomes of animal-adapted MTBC strains. Phylogenomic and comparative analyses confirm that the animal-adapted MTBC members are paraphyletic with some members more closely relate…
Emergence and Disappearance of an Immune Molecule, an Antimicrobial Lectin, in Basal Metazoa
2003
Sponges (phylum Porifera) represent the evolutionarily oldest metazoans that comprise already a complex immune system and are related to the crown taxa of the protostomians and the deuterostomians. Here, we demonstrate the existence of a tachylectin-related protein in the demosponge Suberites domuncula, termed Suberites lectin. The MAPK pathway was activated in response to lipopolysaccharide treatment of the three-dimensional cell aggregates, the primmorphs; this process was abolished by the monosaccharide D-GlcNAc. The cDNA encoding the S. domuncula lectin was identified and cloned; it comprises 238 amino acids (26 kDa) in the open reading frame. The deduced protein has one potential trans…
Factors behind Leisure-Time Physical Activity Behavior Based on Finnish Twin Studies: The Role of Genetic and Environmental Influences and the Role o…
2014
Different approaches are being taken to clarify the role of various factors in the development of physical activity behaviors. Genetic studies are a new area of physical activity research and also the motives for physical activity have been widely studied. The purpose of this paper is to review the findings emerging from the longitudinal genetic studies on leisure-time physical activity and to evaluate the associations between motivational factors and leisure-time physical activity. The focus is to review recent findings of longitudinal Finnish twin studies. The results of the latest longitudinal Finnish twin studies point to the existence of age-specific genetic and environmental influence…
Modeling multipartite virus evolution: the genome formula facilitates rapid adaptation to heterogeneous environments
2020
Multipartite viruses have two or more genome segments, and package different segments into different particle types. Although multipartition is thought to have a cost for virus transmission, its benefits are not clear. Recent experimental work has shown that the equilibrium frequency of viral genome segments, the setpoint genome formula (SGF), can be unbalanced and host-species dependent. These observations have reinvigorated the hypothesis that changes in genome-segment frequencies can lead to changes in virus-gene expression that might be adaptive. Here we explore this hypothesis by developing models of bipartite virus infection, leading to a threefold contribution. First, we show that th…