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Geminiviruses cause major damage to crop plants and evolve through mutations, recombination and pseudo-recombination, expanding their host range and becoming pandemic due to international trade and invasive vector species. Management of geminiviruses consists of breeding resistant crops by employing natural resistance genes from different cultivated or related wild plant species. Compared to other plant viruses, such as potyviruses, the information on resistance genes/loci identified for geminiviruses is scarce. Other strategies have been developed based on the virus genome; however, these have not yet reached the commercial field. Here we catalog and describe the resistance genes/loci identified against the most important geminiviruses, in the most economically important crops they infect: cassava, tomato, bean, maize and cotton.

© 2017 The Authors Despite aggressive antibiotic therapy, bronchopulmonary colonization by Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes persistent morbidity and mortality in cystic fibrosis (CF). Chronic P. aeruginosa infection in the CF lung is associated with structured, antibiotic-tolerant bacterial aggregates known as biofilms. We have demonstrated the effects of non-bactericidal, low-dose nitric oxide (NO), a signaling molecule that induces biofilm dispersal, as a novel adjunctive therapy for P. aeruginosa biofilm infection in CF in an ex vivo model and a proof-of-concept double-blind clinical trial. Submicromolar NO concentrations alone caused disruption of biofilms within ex vivo CF sputum and a statistically significant decrease in ex vivo biofilm tolerance to tobramycin and tobramycin combined with ceftazidime. In the 12-patient randomized clinical trial, 10 ppm NO inhalation caused significant reduction in P. aeruginosa biofilm aggregates compared with placebo across 7 days of treatment. Our results suggest a benefit of using low-dose NO as adjunctive therapy to enhance the efficacy of antibiotics used to treat acute P. aeruginosa exacerbations in CF. Strategies to induce the disruption of biofilms have the potential to overcome biofilm-associated antibiotic tolerance in CF and other biofilm-related diseases.

© 2017 The Authors Despite aggressive antibiotic therapy, bronchopulmonary colonization by Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes persistent morbidity and mortality in cystic fibrosis (CF). Chronic P. aeruginosa infection in the CF lung is associated with structured, antibiotic-tolerant bacterial aggregates known as biofilms. We have demonstrated the effects of non-bactericidal, low-dose nitric oxide (NO), a signaling molecule that induces biofilm dispersal, as a novel adjunctive therapy for P. aeruginosa biofilm infection in CF in an ex vivo model and a proof-of-concept double-blind clinical trial. Submicromolar NO concentrations alone caused disruption of biofilms within ex vivo CF sputum and a statistically significant decrease in ex vivo biofilm tolerance to tobramycin and tobramycin combined with ceftazidime. In the 12-patient randomized clinical trial, 10 ppm NO inhalation caused significant reduction in P. aeruginosa biofilm aggregates compared with placebo across 7 days of treatment. Our results suggest a benefit of using low-dose NO as adjunctive therapy to enhance the efficacy of antibiotics used to treat acute P. aeruginosa exacerbations in CF. Strategies to induce the disruption of biofilms have the potential to overcome biofilm-associated antibiotic tolerance in CF and other biofilm-related diseases.

of a presentation that was presented at the Annual Conference of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, 8-10 April 2014, The ICC, Birmingham.

of a presentation that was presented at the Annual Conference of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, 8-10 April 2014, The ICC, Birmingham.

Historical and archaeological study of the Allen Plantation homesite (38AB102) and the Thomas B. Clinkscales Farm site (38AB221) in Abbeville County, South Carolina was undertaken in conjunction with a broad range of cultural and environmental investigations associated with construction of the Richard B. Russell Dam and Lake on the upper Savannah River. Oral and written documentation indicate that Allen Plantation was one of the more prosperous cotton plantations within the county during the antebellum and postbellum periods. The Clinkscales Farm Site, although very poorly documented in written records, can be associated through oral documentation, architectural details, and artifact patterns with lower socio-economic status occupations during the postbellum period. Two recently documented cemeteries at Allen Plantation were tested and found to contain very poorly preserved skeletal and other organic remains, insufficient for in-depth study of demographic, cultural or nutritional/pathological/stress (osteological) population characters. Comparison of the two domestic occupation complexes revealed patterned intrasite structure which is believed to reflect the larger settlement and economic trends associated with the fragmentation of the plantation system after the Civil War. A model for a Piedmont Refuse Disposal Pattern is proposed as applicable to antebellum and postbellum sites located in Piedmont and foothills areas of pronounced local relief.

Feeding tests were carried out with yellow-wood, which was suspected of poisoning cattle in central Queensland, producing a sub-acute disease characterized by emaciation, photophobia and frequent urination. All animals fed on yellow-wood leaves exhibited symptoms differing only slightly from those observed in natural cases, and yellow-wood is therefore regarded as the cause of the trouble. The main lesion is parenchymatous nephritis.