Background: Schistosoma japonicum is a major public health concern in China, with over one million people infected and another 40 million living in areas at risk of infection. Unlike the disease caused by S. mansoni and S. haematobium, schistosomiasis japonica is a zoonosis, involving a number of different mammalian species as reservoir hosts. As a result of a number of published reports from C...

Granulomatous response was examined in selective IgE-deficient SJA/9 mice infected with Schistosoma japonicum. The average size of granulomas formed around newly deposited eggs in SJA/9 mice was significantly smaller than that in control C57BL/6 or SJL/J mice, although the numbers of adult worms recovered from each strain were comparable among them. Thus, IgE antibody specific to allergenic com...

Two oxygen-responsive regulatory systems controlling numerous symbiotic genes in Bradyrhizobium japonicum were assayed in free-living cultures for their capacity to activate target genes under different oxygen conditions. NifA- and FixLJ-controlled target genes showed disparate relative expression patterns. Induction of NifA-dependent genes was observed only at oxygen concentrations below 2% in...

A sensitive tritium exchange assay was applied to the Rhizobium system for measuring the expression of uptake hydrogenase in free-living cultures of Rhizobium japonicum. Hydrogenase was detected about 45 hours after inoculation of cultures maintained under microaerophilic conditions (about 0.1% O(2)). The tritium exchange assay was used to screen a variety of different strains of R. japonicum (...

T cell lines (TCLs) specific for Schistosoma japonicum egg antigen were established from a patient with chronic schistosomiasis japonica to investigate the regulatory mechanism of S.japonicum egg antigen-driven T cell responses in man. All five TCLs tested were CD2+, CD4+, CD8-, and were strongly proliferative only to S. japonicum egg antigen in the absence of exogenous IL-2. All but one TCL pr...

Schmidt 1973; Kapusta and Rouwenhorst 1973; Weaver and Frederick 1974). However, the numbers needed to overcome indigenous rhizobia are in many cases too excessive to be practical. In much of the soybean-growing area in the north central United States, an area encompassing many soil types, indigeneous strains of Bradyrhizobium japonicum serogroup 123 dominate nodulation of soybeans (Damirgi et ...

Human schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma japonicum and Schistosoma mekongi is a chronic and debilitating helminthic disease still prevalent in several countries of Asia. Due to morphological similarities of cercariae and eggs of these 2 species, microscopic differentiation is difficult. High resolution melting (HRM) real-time PCR is developed as an alternative tool for the detection and diff...

Legumes interact with nodulating bacteria that convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia for plant use. This nitrogen fixation takes place within root nodules that form after infection of root hairs by compatible rhizobia. Using cDNA microarrays, we monitored gene expression in soybean (Glycine max) inoculated with the nodulating bacterium Bradyrhizobium japonicum 4, 8, and 16 days after inocul...

New host plant records are given for six Empria species from Japan. They are Rosa multiflora [Rosaceae] for E. honshuana Prous & Heidemaa, 2011, Rubus sp. [Rosaceae] for E. japonica Heidemaa & Prous, 2011, Geum japonicum and G. calthifolium var. nipponicum [Rosaceae] for E. loktini Ermolenko, 1971, Rosa multiflora, Potentilla indica and probably Rubus parvifolius [Rosaceae] for E. quadrimaculat...