Aspergillus flavus colonizes agricultural commodities worldwide and contaminates them with carcinogenic aflatoxins. The high genetic diversity of A. flavus populations is largely due to sexual reproduction characterized by the formation of ascospore-bearing ascocarps embedded within sclerotia. A. flavus is heterothallic and laboratory crosses between strains of the opposite mating type produce ...

Fourteen new species in the Latin American Clade (LAC) of the Ceratocystis fimbriata complex recently were distinguished from C. fimbriata sensu stricto largely based on variation in ITS rDNA sequences. Among the 116 isolates representing the LAC, there were 41 ITS haplotypes. Maximum parsimony (MP) analysis of ITS sequences produced poorly resolved trees. In contrast, analyses of mating-type g...

Natural hybridization between two strains, varieties, or species is a common phenomenon in both plants and animals. Although hybridization may skew established gene pools, it generates population diversity efficiently and sometimes results in the emergence of newly adapted genotypes. Cryptococcus neoformans, which causes the most frequent opportunistic fungal infection in immunocompromised host...

The canine oral microbiota is poorly understood compared to that of humans. The aim of this work was to improve understanding of the canine oral microbiota. This was achieved by surveying the canine oral microbiota, determining coaggregation interactions between its mem­ bers, and developing a laboratory microcosm. Bacteria were isolated from the dental plaque and saliva of dogs, and isolates w...

Detailed analysis of the inheritance of molecular markers was performed in the oomycete plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Linkage analysis in the sexual progeny of two Dutch field isolates (cross 71) resulted in a high-density map containing 508 markers on 13 major and 10 minor linkage groups. The map showed strong clustering of markers, particularly of markers originating from one parent,...

Molecular markers can be employed to predict the parental genome contribution to inbred lines. The proportion alpha of alleles originating from parent P1 at markers polymorphic between the parental lines P1 and P2 is commonly used as a predictor for the genome contribution of parent P1 to an offspring line. Our objectives were to develop a new marker-based predictor xi for the parental genome c...

One of the ways of haploid production is a cross between wheat and maize. Recently success has been achieved in this method, leading to the production of zygotes; these zygotes generally undergo elimination of maize chromosomes and thus lead to production of wheat haploid plant. The purpose of this study was to develop an efficient method of haploid production via maize pollination in short dur...

Interbreeding potential, chromosome number, and host range were compared among several isolates and species of Bursaphelenchus from diverse geographic areas. Some isolates from North America, Japan, and France had a wide-ranging interbreeding potential, whereas others were restricted in their potential to hybridize with other isolates. Although interbreeding occurred in the laboratory between s...