Clostridium botulinum comprises a diverse group of botulinum toxin-producing anaerobic rod-shaped spore-forming bacteria that are ubiquitously distributed in soils and aquatic sediments. Decomposition of plants, algae, and animals creates anaerobic environments that facilitate growth of C. botulinum, which may then enter into food webs leading to intoxication of animals. Via saprophytic utiliza...

Understanding the complete picture of floral transition is still impaired by the fact that physiological studies mainly concern plant species whose genetics is poorly known, and vice versa. Arabidopsis thaliana has been successfully used to unravel signalling pathways by genetic and molecular approaches, but analyses are still required to determine the physiological signals involved in the cont...

Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) have been associated with Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in several recent studies. The exact mechanism through which PPIs may cause Clostridium difficile infection is not well understood. One potential mechanism to explain this association may be that elevated gastric pH levels facilitate the growth of potentially pathogenic upper and lower gastrointestinal...

Changes in DNA methylation during tobacco pollen development have been studied by confocal fluorescence microscopy using a monoclonal anti-5-methylcytosine (anti-m5C) antibody and a polyclonal anti-histone H1 (anti-histone) antibody as an internal standard. The specificity of the anti-m5C antibody was demonstrated by a titration series against both single-stranded DNA and double-stranded DNA su...

Fluorescence was observed under light microscope in living cells and cell mass of Dictyostelium mucoroides. The fluorescence was localized in the vacuoles of live vegetative cells. While the cell mass of D. discoideum does not have a stalk during migration period, the cell mass of D. mucoroides has a stalk that forms at the beginning of the migration period. We were able to observe a preferenti...

Plant associations with root microbes represent some of the most important symbioses on earth. While often critically promoting plant fitness, nitrogen-fixing rhizobia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) also demand significant carbohydrate allocation in exchange for key nutrients. Though plants may often compensate for carbon loss, constraints may arise under light limitation when plants ca...

Bacterial spores are resistant to a wide range of chemical and physical insults that are normally lethal for the vegetative form of the bacterium. While the integrity of the protein coat of the spore is crucial for spore survival in vitro, far less is known about how the coat provides protection in vivo against predation by ecologically relevant hosts. In particular, assays had characterized th...