HISTORY Since the emperor Shen Nong tasted 100 herbs and taught the Chinese people how to use them in diet and therapy, herbal medicine has been an integral part of Chinese culture and medical practice. Descriptions of herbal therapy occur in the earliest texts that discuss Chinese medical practice. The traditional Chinese materia medica includes minerals and animal parts as well as herbs. Late...

background: many plant growth-promoting bacteria including rhizobia contain the 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (acc) deaminase enzyme that can leave acc, and thereby lower the level of ethylene in stressed plants. drought and salinity are the most common environmental stress factors for plants in iran. objectives: the main aim of this research was development of bio-fertilizers containing ac...

A shotgun lipidomics approach that allowed the analysis of eight lipid classes directly from crude extracts of the soil bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti is presented. New MS-MS transitions are reported for the analysis of monomethylphosphatidylethanolamines, dimethylphosphatidylethanolamines, and three bacterial non-phosphorus-containing lipid classes [sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerols, ornithines...

Agrobacterium, Sinorhizobium, and Ochrobactrum are genera closely related to Brucella but, in contrast to the latter, are not pathogenic for humans and animals. We studied by an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) the reactivities of brucellosis sera against cytosolic (CYT) and membrane (MA) antigens from these nonpathogenic bacteria, and we evaluated the potential usefulness of ...

The presence of nitrogen inhibits legume nodule formation, but the mechanism of this inhibition is poorly understood. We found that 2.5 mM nitrate and above significantly inhibited nodule initiation but not root hair curling in Medicago trunatula. We analyzed protein abundance in M. truncatula roots after treatment with either 0 or 2.5 mM nitrate in the presence or absence of its symbiont Sinor...

Antimony (Sb) is a naturally occurring toxic element commonly associated with arsenic (As) in the environment and both elements have similar chemistry and toxicity. Increasing numbers of studies have focused on microbial As transformations, while microbial Sb interactions are still not well understood. To gain insight into microbial roles in the geochemical cycling of Sb and As, soils from Sb m...

The current classification of the rhizobia (root-nodule symbionts) assigns them to six genera. It is strongly influenced by the small subunit (16S, SSU) rRNA molecular phylogeny, but such single-gene phylogenies may not reflect the evolution of the genome as a whole. To test this, parts of the atpD and recA genes have been sequenced for 25 type strains within the alpha-Proteobacteria, represent...

The role of glycine betaine and choline in osmoprotection of various Rhizobium, Sinorhizobium, Mesorhizobium, Agrobacterium, and Bradyrhizobium reference strains which display a large variation in salt tolerance was investigated. When externally provided, both compounds enhanced the growth of Rhizobium tropici, Sinorhizobium meliloti, Sinorhizobium fredii, Rhizobium galegae, Agrobacterium tumef...

Deletions in the pSym megaplasmid of Rhizobium meliloti were produced at a high frequency, and their lengths varied according to incubation temperature. Morphological differentiation into large and small colonies occurred after heat treatment. Small colonies elicited pseudonodules on alfalfa roots.