Confirming the pathogenicity of mitochondrial tRNA point mutations is one of the classical challenges in the field of mitochondrial medicine. In addition to genetic and functional studies, the evaluation of a genetic change using a pathogenicity scoring system is extremely useful to discriminate between disease-causing mutations from neutral polymorphisms. The pathogenicity scoring system is ve...

Mycoviruses are a specific group of viruses that naturally infect and replicate in fungi. The importance of mycoviruses was revealed after their effects were identified not only in economically important fungi but also in the human pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. The latter was shown recently to harbor at least three different types of mycoviruses including a chrysovirus, a partitiviru...

Pseudomonas cichorii causes necrotic lesions in eggplant and rot in lettuce. Through transposon insertion into P. cichorii strain SPC9018 we produced two mutants, 4-57 and 2-99, that lost virulence on eggplant but not lettuce. Analyses showed that a transposon was inserted into the hrpG gene in 4-57 and the hrcT gene in 2-99. Nucleotide sequences of the hrp genes of SPC9018 are homologous to th...

Novel subtypes of Asian-origin (Goose/Guangdong lineage) H5 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses belonging to clade 2.3.4, such as H5N2, H5N5, H5N6, and H5N8, have been identified in China since 2008 and have since evolved into four genetically distinct clade 2.3.4.4 groups (A-D). Since 2014, HPAI clade 2.3.4.4 viruses have spread rapidly via migratory wild aquatic birds and have ev...

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite with a broad range of intermediate hosts. Chickens as important food-producing animals can also serve as intermediate hosts. To date, experimental studies on the pathogenicity of T. gondii in broiler chickens were rarely reported. The objective of the present study was to compare the pathogenicity of 5 different T. gondii strains (RH, CN, JS, CAT2, and ...

Eleven Acanthamoeba isolates, obtained from Acanthamoeba keratitis patients, from contact lens cases of non-Acanthamoeba keratitis patients, from asymptomatic individuals, from necrotic tissue, and from tap water and two reference strains were investigated by morphological, molecular biological, and physiological means in order to discriminate clinically relevant and nonrelevant isolates. All c...

gibberella fujikuroi the cause of rice bakanae disease and foot rot is one of the important seed-borne diseases in guilan province. three fusarium species including fusarium proliferatum, fusarium verticillioides and fusarium fujikuroi have been reported as the casual agents of rice bakanae disease from all over the world. these three species belonged to three mating population a, c and d that ...