Parasitic plants have major impacts on plant community structure through their direct negative influence on host productivity and competitive ability. However, the possibility that these parasites may also have indirect impacts on community structure (via the mechanism of nutrient-rich litter input) while long hypothesized, has remained unsupported until now. Using the hemiparasite Rhinanthus m...

Danny JOEL (Israel) President [email protected] Jim WESTWOOD (USA) Vice-President [email protected] Koichi YONEYAMA (Japan) Secretary [email protected] Phillippe DELAVAULT (France) Treasurer [email protected] Diego RUBIALES (Spain) Editor [email protected] Grama DHANAPAL (India) Member [email protected] Fred KANAPIU (Kenya) Member [email protected] S...

It is pointed out that the newly described Phoradendron perredactum Rzedowski & Calderón exhibits an advanced type of growth behavior (isophasic parasitism) that also occurs in three other, unrelated groups of parasitic flowering plants.

Genetic variation in plants can influence the community structure of associated species, through both direct and indirect interactions. Herbivorous insects are known to feed on a restricted range of plants, and herbivore preference and performance can vary among host plants within a species due to genetically based traits of the plant (e.g., defensive compounds). In a natural system, we expect ...

Broomrapes (Orobanche and Phelipanche spp) are parasitic plants responsible for important crop losses, and efficient procedures to control these pests are scarce. Biological control is one of the possible strategies to tackle these pests. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi are widespread soil microorganisms that live symbiotically with the roots of most plant species, and they have already been ...

Plant pathogen effectors can recruit the host post-translational machinery to mediate their post-translational modification (PTM) and regulate their activity to facilitate parasitism, but few studies have focused on this phenomenon in the field of plant-parasitic nematodes. In this study, we show that the plant-parasitic nematode Meloidogyne graminicola has evolved a novel effector, MgGPP, that...

In parasitic plants, the reduction in plastid genome (plastome) size and content is driven predominantly by the loss of photosynthetic genes. The first completed mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) from parasitic mistletoes also exhibit significant degradation, but the generality of this observation for other parasitic plants is unclear. We sequenced the complete mitogenome and plastome of the ...

BACKGROUND Parasitic nematodes of humans, other animals and plants continue to impose a significant public health and economic burden worldwide, due to the diseases they cause. Promising antiparasitic drug and vaccine candidates have been discovered from excreted or secreted (ES) proteins released from the parasite and exposed to the immune system of the host. Mining the entire expressed sequen...

As part of an NSF-funded initiative, biology students, primarily those in the early stages of their degree program, were recruited to participate in ongoing research alongside principle investigators. In this example, ten students were given five weeks of intensive training in molecular research methods, with the objective of cloning genes involved in core metabolic processes in the parasitic p...

background: domestic wastewater is a most important source of infectious factors in the environment. the aim of this study was to determine the raw wastewater parasitic contamination of cites of kermanshah province. methods: this study was a descriptive cross–sectional one which was carried out in 5 months, sampling was accomplished once a five days from inlet raw wastewater to treatment plants...