The ascomycete fungus Ophiostoma novo-ulmi is responsible for the pandemic of Dutch elm disease that has been ravaging Europe and North America for 50 years. We proceeded to annotate the genome of the O. novo-ulmi strain H327 that was sequenced in 2012. The 31.784-Mb nuclear genome (50.1% GC) is organized into 8 chromosomes containing a total of 8,640 protein-coding genes that we validated with...

Dicistroviridae is a new family of small, nonenveloped, and +ssRNA viruses pathogenic to both beneficial arthropods and insect pests as well. Triatoma virus (TrV), a dicistrovirus, is a pathogen of Triatoma infestans (Hemiptera: Reduviidae), one of the main vectors of Chagas disease. In this work, we report a single-step method to identify TrV, a dicistrovirus, isolated from fecal samples of tr...

Patterns of evolution in immune defense genes help to understand the evolutionary dynamics between hosts and pathogens. Multiple insect genomes have been sequenced, with many of them having annotated immune genes, which paves the way for a comparative genomic analysis of insect immunity. In this review, I summarize the current state of comparative and evolutionary genomics of insect innate immu...

Cembranoids produced by tobacco glandular trichomes have bioactivities in resistance to insect pests and pathogens. Cembratrien-ol synthase (CBTS) plays a key role the biosynthesis of cembranoids directly determines cembranoid content tobacco. This study examined effect changing CBTS1 expression on pest Spodoptera frugiperda oomycete pathogen Phytophthora nicotianae. The CDS sequence was cloned...

We thank M.J.Toliver and W.J. Hatfield for their technical assistance. This work was supported by the University of Arkansas, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, and by USDA CSREES Pest Management Alternatives Grant 2002-34381 -12156 and USDA CSREES Food Safety Consortium Grant 2001 -34211-10288. Carrie B. Owens and Allen L. Szalanski University of Arkansas, Department of Entomology, Faye...

Project Summary: Recent research on exemplary organic farms in the northeastern U.S.A. identified a vegetable and a grain farm with particularly successful systems. These farms achieve consistently high yields and have low weed, insect and pathogen problems, despite minimal off-farm inputs. The strategy of the proposed project is to demonstrate that these farming systems can be duplicated and c...