The larvicidal activity of the crude petroleum ether, ethyl acetate, acetone, chloroform and ethanol extracts of Amorpha fruticosa seeds was individually assayed for toxicity against the early fourth-instar larva of the mosquito, Culex pipiens pallens after 24 h exposure. Of the tested extracts, the ethanol one exhibited the highest larvicidal activity (LC50 = 22.69 mg/L). Amorphigenin (8'-hydr...

AIMS To identify several strains of Mesorhizobium amorphae and Mesorhizobium tianshanense nodulating Cicer arietinum in Spain and Portugal, and to study the symbiotic genes carried by these strains. METHODS AND RESULTS The sequences of 16S-23S intergenic spacer (ITS), 16S rRNA gene and symbiotic genes nodC and nifH were analysed. According to their 16S rRNA gene and ITS sequences, the strains...

To construct a versatile model host for heterologous expression of genes encoding secondary metabolite biosynthesis, the genome of the industrial microorganism Streptomyces avermitilis was systematically deleted to remove nonessential genes. A region of more than 1.4 Mb was deleted stepwise from the 9.02-Mb S. avermitilis linear chromosome to generate a series of defined deletion mutants, corre...

Isoprenoids are a large and diverse class of compounds that includes many high value natural products and are thus in great demand. To meet the increasing demand for isoprenoid compounds, metabolic engineering of microbes has been used to produce isoprenoids in an economical and sustainable manner. To achieve high isoprenoid yields using this technology, the availability of metabolic precursors...

Pathogenicity of strains of the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana and endophytic strains of Beauveria sp against the bovine tick Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus was tested in laboratory bioassays and under field conditions. Suspensions containing 10(5), 10(7) and 10(9) conidia/mL were prepared of each fungal strain for laboratory bioassays. The ticks were maintained at 28 degrees C...

Volatile organic compounds of Amorpha fruticosa honey samples were isolated by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and ultrasonic solvent extraction (USE), followed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analyses (GC, GC-MS), in order to obtain complementary data for overall characterization of the honey aroma. The headspace of the honey was dominated by 2-phenylethanol (38.3-5...

The nucleolus of Chinese hamster tissue culture cells (strain Dede) was studied in each stage of mitosis with the electron microscope. Mitotic cells were selectively removed from the cultures with 0.2 per cent trypsin and fixed in either osmium tetroxide or glutaraldehyde followed by osmium tetroxide. The cells were embedded in both prepolymerized methacrylate and Epon 812. Thin sections of int...

Canopy analysis was carried out in order to classify the differences between vegetation types at the Szárazvölgy flotation sludge reservoir. Supervised classification methods were used to distinguish 8 vegetation types based on the spectral properties of the area: forest (Quercus sp.), young deciduous forest, reed (Phragmites sp.) and aquatic plants, false indigo (Amorpha fruticosa), Australian...