To study the control of postharvest decay caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides and Penicillium expansum, gamma irradiation alone or in combination with fumigation was evaluated to extend the shelf life of apples in South Korea. An irradiation dose of 2.0 kGy resulted in the maximum inhibition of C. gloeosporioides and P. expansum spore germination. The gamma irradiation dose required to red...

Fungal conidia contain chemicals that inhibit germination and appressorium formation until they are well dispersed in a favorable environment. Recently, such self-inhibitors were found to be present on the conidia of Magnaporthe grisea, and plant surface waxes were found to relieve this self-inhibition. To determine whether the self-inhibitors suppress the expression of early genes involved in ...

The opportunistic human pathogen Penicillium marneffei exhibits a temperature-dependent dimorphic switch. At 25 degrees, multinucleate, septate hyphae that can undergo differentiation to produce asexual spores (conidia) are produced. At 37 degrees hyphae undergo arthroconidiation to produce uninucleate yeast cells that divide by fission. This work describes the cloning of the P. marneffei gasC ...

Chestnut blight, caused by the fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, has been effectively controlled with double-stranded RNA hypoviruses in Europe for over 40 years. The marked reduction in the virulence of C. parasitica by hypoviruses is a phenomenon known as hypovirulence. This virus-fungus pathosystem has become a model system for the study of biological control of fungi with viruses. We studied...

The fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus is responsible for increasing numbers of fatal infections in immune-compromised humans. Alveolar macrophages (AM) are important in the innate defense against aspergillosis, but little is known about their molecular responses to fungal conidia in vivo. We examined transcriptional changes and superoxide release by AM from C57BL/6 and gp91(phox)(-/-) mice ...

Pistachio nut is a strategic product throughout the world, especially in Iran. There are some problems that reduce production and export of pistachios, for example, postharvest fungi, especially Aspergillus spp., that lead to production of mycotoxins. Nowadays the use of chemical and synthetic antifungals is discouraged and reduced because of health risks to mankind and nature. In present study...