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ABBA (Apple, Bee, Bacteria, Antagonists) onFire (Fire Blight) is a three-year internal consortium project at the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI), in which six JKI institutes are involved. In this project, an innovative treatment approach based on natural tailocin-producing bacteria is being investigated to combat the fire blight pathogen Erwinia amylovora in organic pome fruit cultivation. In addition to effectiveness, the project also assesses potential impacts on non-target organisms and the environment. The project aims to verify the benefits of microbial genomic mining, through a proof-of-concept using the pathogen Erwinia amylovora. The objective is to search for natural antagonists against this plant pathogenic bacterium in organic farming and thus to develop a practical, specific control concept. The overall aim of the project is to develop an approach that can also be transferred to other harmful bacteria and be used for prophylactic treatments in organic farming.

Diese Übersichtsarbeit verfolgt das Ziel, über bakterielle kontraktile Phagenderivate (englisch CPTPs) und ihr Potenzial als effiziente und Schadorganismus-spezifische Alternativen zu konventionellen chemischen Pflanzenschutzmitteln in der Land-/Forstwirtschaft und im Gartenbau zu informieren. CPTPs werden von verschiedenen Bakterien in diversen Habitaten für den interbakteriellen Konkurrenzkampf sowie zur Beeinflussung eukaryotischer Wirte, wie Pilze und Insekten, verwendet. Diese Arbeit präsentiert interessante und bemerkenswerte Beispiele für den vielfältigen Einsatz von CPTPs als leistungsfähige biologische Bekämpfungsmittel. Wir stellen die verschiedenen Typen von CPTPs vor und legen einen besonderen Fokus auf diejenigen, die eine Wirkung gegen Schadinsekten besitzen. Zusätzlich stellen wir zwei kürzlich etablierte Webservices vor, die das permanent wachsende Wissen über CPTPs mit einem Auswahlverfahren für die besten Bakterienkandidaten kombinieren, um eine zielgerichtete Anwendung der CPTPs in der nachhaltigen Pflanzenproduk­tion zu ermöglichen.

Abstract Working memory capacity is known to predict the performance of novices and experts on a variety of tasks found in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). A common feature of STEM tasks is that they require the problem solver to encode and transform complex spatial information depicted in disciplinary representations that seemingly exceed the known capacity limits of visuospatial working memory. Understanding these limits and how visuospatial information is encoded and transformed differently by STEM learners presents new avenues for addressing the challenges students face while navigating STEM classes and degree programs. Here, we describe two studies that explore student accuracy at detecting color changes in visual stimuli from the discipline of chemistry. We demonstrate that both naive and novice chemistry students’ encoding of visuospatial information is affected by how information is visually structured in “chunks” prevalent across chemistry representations. In both studies we show that students are more accurate at detecting color changes within chemistry-relevant chunks compared to changes that occur outside of them, but performance was not affected by the dimensionality of the structure (2D vs 3D) or the presence of redundancies in the visual representation. These studies support the hypothesis that strategies for chunking the spatial structure of information may be critical tools for transcending otherwise severely limited visuospatial capacity in the absence of expertise.

Cyanobacterial toxins have been shown to have a far-reaching impactfrom aquatic organisms to human health. Aquatic organisms are typically exposed in their natural environment to toxic cyanobacteria, and exposure can occur via ingestion of cyanobacterial cells or by bioaccumulation of water-borne toxin. The aquaculture and fisheries of crustaceans are among the most important seafood industries. Concomitant with the growth of this industry, the importance of the health of crustaceans increased. The black tiger prawn is the major cultivated prawn in Australia. The aquaculture of these prawns takes place in shallow ponds, where blooms, often of cyanobacteria, develop. Cyanobacterial toxins were hypothesized to contribute to the mortality of prawns. Many aquatic organisms have the possibility of detoxifying cyanobacterial toxins via conjugation to glutathione. The presence of several classes of the cytosolic glutathione S-transferase system in black tiger prawnsmu, pi, theta, alpha, and tauwas shown using different substrates for measurement. Injection experiments with microcystin-LR and feeding experiments with nodularin revealed elevation of GST activity in different types of prawn tissue in parallel with reduction in the GST classes. Correlation analyses of toxin content of the prawns with GST activity showed that low toxin content was correlated with high elevation of enzymes and high toxin content with low elevation of enzymes. 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 20: 301307, 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]