Seawater salt-trapped Pseudomonas aeruginosa survives for years and gets primed for salinity tolerance

Salinity Stress and Salt Tolerance

Salinity is one of the most serious factors limiting the productivity of agricultural crops, with adverse effects on germination, plant vigour and crop yield (R Munns & Tester, 2008). Salinization affects many irrigated areas mainly due to the use of brackish water. Worldwide, more than 45 million hectares of irrigated land have been damaged by salt, and 1.5 million hectares are taken out of pr...

Salt and Crops: Salinity Tolerance

Soils are delicate structures, and careless agricultural practices can destroy them. Crop decline resulting from increased soil salinity can be traced back thousands of years to Sumer and Babylonia. There, the original “Fertile Crescent” eventually turned into desert, destroyed by deforestation, unwise planting, and irrigation-induced soil salinity. Such decline in soil productivity also was ev...

Otopathogenic Pseudomonas aeruginosa Enters and Survives Inside Macrophages

Otitis media (OM) is a broad term describing a group of infectious and inflammatory disorders of the middle ear. Despite antibiotic therapy, acute OM can progress to chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) characterized by ear drum perforation and purulent discharge. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the most common pathogen associated with CSOM. Although, macrophages play an important role in innate i...

2 Salinity Stress and Salt Tolerance

TGF-β gets primed for action

M yofibroblasts are highly con-tractile cells that repair damaged tissues by secreting and remod-eling the extracellular matrix (ECM) within a wound in order to draw it closed (1). When myofibroblasts are dysregulated, however, they continue to act on healed tissues and induce fi brosis. TGF-␤1 is a key signaling molecule within the ECM that promotes tissue fi brosis. Klingberg et al. reveal th...