An efficient method for regeneration of lavandin (Lavandula x intermedia cv. 'Grosso')

An efficient protocol for the regeneration of lavandin (Lavandula x intermedia cv. 'Grosso') is reported. Thiadazuron (9 μM), a plant growth-modulating phenylurea, was used to induce callus formation and shoot initiation from cultured leaf explants. Newly emerged shoots were maintained on media containing 0.05 μM naphthaleneacetic acid to allow maturation, and then transferred to media containing 2.9 μM indole-3-acetic acid to allow root formation. The phenolic control agents polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), ascorbic acid, 2-aminoindane-2-phosphonic acid, and activated charcoal were tested for their ability to prevent shoot browning and death in culture. All agents except PVP were found to be effective, with ascorbic acid being most consistent in promoting development of healthy mature shoots. The effect of light type (red light vs. white light) and culture medium composition (full- and half-strength Murashige and Skoog or Llyod and McCown’s woody plant medium (WPM)) on rooting efficiency was also evaluated. Cultures on half-strength WPM in white light were found to have the highest rooting efficiency. Additionally, application of the polyamines putrescine, spermine, and spermidine were tested for their effect on rooting. While rooting efficiency was not improved with any of the treatments, spermine and spermidine were found to have an inhibitory effect at concentrations greater than 10 μM.     

Studies on the morphology and histology of the ovary of red palm weevil female irradiated with gamma rays

The present study involves red palm weevil adults Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Oliver) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) irradiated with 5, 10 or 15 Gy of gamma radiation. The biological effects of gamma irradiation on the F₁ adult females, descendant of irradiated parental male pupae, were studied. The percentage egg hatch decreased significantly, as the dose increased, compared with the untreated control.The effect of gamma irradiation on the morphology of the ovaries showed a remarkable effect on size, shape and measurement of the paired ovaries.Additionally, histological studies showed some damages by irradiation of the oocytes maturation, which increased with increasing dose. These symptoms were elongation of the terminal filament, rupture, separation, or shrinkage of external sheath and follicular epithelium, degenerated or absent of nurse cells, and ruptured oocytes at 15 Gy.Vacuolation appeared in different degrees inside the oocytes and the nurse cells were absent in some areas. The damage in the oocytes was more severe as the dose was increased. The follicular epithelium was thin, oocytes clumped together throughout the ovariole causing some oocytes become abnormal or rectangular in shape.     

Design and Performance of a 16S rRNA-Targeted Oligonucleotide Probe for Detection of Members of the Genus Bdellovibrio by Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization

A 16S rRNA-targeted, Cy3-labeled oligonucleotide probe was designed to detect members of the genus Bdellovibrio by fluorescence in situ hybridization. Specific hybridization conditions were established; however, the detection of bdellovibrios in environmental samples required enrichment, confirming that Bdellovibrio spp. are not present in large numbers in the environment.     

The Human Mycobiome and its Impact on Health and Disease

Current Fungal Infection Reports - Until recently, the human microbiome was synonymous with the bacterial community. Fortunately, recent studies have shown that the human microbiome is complex and...     

Utilisation of biocides for controlling pest attacks on potato tubers

Essential oils of fennel, peppermint and caraway were formulated in the form of emulsifiable concentrates. Different concentrations of the formulated oils were prepared. The prepared concentrations were tested in vivo for their inhibitory activity against the growth of Fusarium oxysporum (the casual agent of dry rot on potato). The results showed that different concentrations of the formulated fennel, peppermint and caraway oils exerted highly toxicity against the inoculated fungus. In addition, all formulated oils with different forms showed high activity for controlling the decay when applied as protective and therapeutic agents.     

Enhanced Regulatory Sequence Prediction Using Gapped k-mer Features

Oligomers of length k, or k-mers, are convenient and widely used features for modeling the properties and functions of DNA and protein sequences. However, k-mers suffer from the inherent limitation that if the parameter k is increased to resolve longer features, the probability of observing any specific k-mer becomes very small, and k-mer counts approach a binary variable, with most k-mers absent and a few present once. Thus, any statistical learning approach using k-mers as features becomes susceptible to noisy training set k-mer frequencies once k becomes large. To address this problem, we introduce alternative feature sets using gapped k-mers, a new classifier, gkm-SVM, and a general method for robust estimation of k-mer frequencies. To make the method applicable to large-scale genome wide applications, we develop an efficient tree data structure for computing the kernel matrix. We show that compared to our original kmer-SVM and alternative approaches, our gkm-SVM predicts functional genomic regulatory elements and tissue specific enhancers with significantly improved accuracy, increasing the precision by up to a factor of two. We then show that gkm-SVM consistently outperforms kmer-SVM on human ENCODE ChIP-seq datasets, and further demonstrate the general utility of our method using a Naïve-Bayes classifier. Although developed for regulatory sequence analysis, these methods can be applied to any sequence classification problem.     

Enhanced in vitro production of Ruta graveolens L. coumarins and rutin by mannitol and ventilation

Ruta graveolens shoot cultures were maintained on static medium supplemented with 0, 1, 2 and 3?% mannitol. The cultures were grown in vessels that ensured a ventilation rate of 7.44, 10.82 or 62.83 air exchanges per day (V1, V2 or V3, respectively). The growth index and fresh weight were significantly increased at 1?% mannitol and decreased with increasing mannitol concentrations, whereas the dry weight (DW) and DW?% increased at higher concentrations of mannitol. Improving the culture ventilation significantly increased all of these parameters. A higher concentration of mannitol resulted in a higher proline content and percentage of coumarins and rutin, but the final accumulation of these bioactive molecules decreased. The coumarins, calculated as xanthotoxin, were increased from 8.15 to 13.60?mg?g^?1 DW using (V1 and mannitol-free medium) and (V2 with medium enriched with 2?% mannitol), respectively. Rutin was linearly increased by raising the mannitol concentrations, achieving the highest content of 54.87?mg?g^?1 DW using V2 and medium supplemented with 3?% mannitol. The lowest accumulation of coumarins and rutin (32, 144?mg vessel^?1, respectively) were found on mannitol-free medium using V1, whereas the highest rutin contents were found on medium with 1?% mannitol using V3. A GC analysis revealed the presence of five main compounds in all of the cultures, coumarin, 7-hydroxucoumarin, scopoletin, xanthotoxin and bergapten, whereas pasoralen was not detected when the cultures were maintained on mannitol-free medium, regardless of the type of vessel. Moreover, the concentrations of these compounds varied according to the mannitol concentration and ventilation.     

Repellency of Palizin® (Coconut Soap) with three laboratory techniques against five stored-product insect pests

The heavy economic damages are the major concern in storage that was caused by coleopteran pests. The conventional control that is accomplished by synthetic pesticides created toxicity to non-target organisms, development of resistance and residue’s problems. Nowadays, with changes in legislation and consumer demand, alternatives to synthetic pesticide to manage the store product pest are increasingly needed. The repellent compounds could be considered as one of the mentioned methods in storage. In this study, five widespread species of stored product pest including Sitophilus oryzae Linnaeus, Tribolium castaneum Herbst, Rhizopertha dominica Fabricius, Oryzaephilus surinamensis Linnaeus and Lasioderma serricorne Fabricius were conducted to assay the percentage repellency (PR) of Palizin^® (Coconut Soap 65%). Percentage repellency was achieved with beetles which were exposed to 0, 0.5, 1, 5 and 10% concentration using three techniques: filter papers, Y-shape tube and cup bioassays. In each of these methods, the means of PR reacted to increasing concentration except T. castaneum and O. surinamensis after 72 and 48 h. The maximum PR of Palizin^® belonged to a concentration of 10% (except R. dominica at 5% and 48 h). Among the methods, except filter paper, degradation process resulted to a decreasing trend of PR. In the present experiment, Palizin^® can be recommended as a limiting factor of all beetles and the data which were exported by Cub bioassay were closely adapted to reality condition of storage.     

A 3D Fibrous Scaffold Inducing Tumoroids: A Platform for Anticancer Drug Development

The development of a suitable three dimensional (3D) culture system for anticancer drug development remains an unmet need. Despite progress, a simple, rapid, scalable and inexpensive 3D-tumor model that recapitulates in vivo tumorigenesis is lacking. Herein, we report on the development and characterization of a 3D nanofibrous scaffold produced by electrospinning a mixture of poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) and a block copolymer of polylactic acid (PLA) and mono-methoxypolyethylene glycol (mPEG) designated as 3P. Cancer cells cultured on the 3P scaffold formed tight irregular aggregates similar to in vivo tumors, referred to as tumoroids that depended on the topography and net charge of the scaffold. 3P scaffolds induced tumor cells to undergo the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) as demonstrated by up-regulation of vimentin and loss of E-cadherin expression. 3P tumoroids showed higher resistance to anticancer drugs than the same tumor cells grown as monolayers. Inhibition of ERK and PI3K signal pathways prevented EMT and reduced tumoroid formation, diameter and number. Fine needle aspirates, collected from tumor cells implanted in mice when cultured on 3P scaffolds formed tumoroids, but showed decreased sensitivity to anticancer drugs, compared to tumoroids formed by direct seeding. These results show that 3P scaffolds provide an excellent platform for producing tumoroids from tumor cell lines and from biopsies and that the platform can be used to culture patient biopsies, test for anticancer compounds and tailor a personalized cancer treatment.     

Identification of sequences required for inhibition of oncogene-mediated transformation by pp32.

Oncogenic potential in prostate cancer is modulated in part by alternative use of genes of the pp32 family. This family includes the tumor suppressor pp32, expressed in normal tissue, and the pro-oncogenic genes pp32r1 and pp32r2 that are found principally in neoplastic cells. At the protein level, pp32, pp32r1, and pp32r2 are approximately 90% identical, yet they subsume opposite functions. In this study, we identify the region of pp32 associated with the ability to inhibit oncogene-mediated transformation in a rat embryo fibroblast system, an in vitro correlate of tumor-suppressive activity. Deletion and truncation analysis define a region spanning pp32 amino acids 150-174 as absolutely required for inhibition of transformed foci elicited by RAS and MYC. Comparison of pp32 with the pp32r1 sequence by moving averages of sequence identity reveals divergence over this region; pp32r2 also differs in this region through truncation after pp32 amino acid 131. The deletion experiments and the experiments of nature therefore converge to demonstrate that tumor-suppressive functions of pp32 reside in amino acids 150-174. Identification of this minimal tumor-suppressive region should help elaborate the pathways and mechanisms through which pp32 family members exert their functions.