Species of the Fusarium fujikuroi species complex (FFC) cause a wide spectrum of often devastating diseases on diverse agricultural crops, including coffee, fig, mango, maize, rice, and sugarcane. Although species within the FFC are difficult to distinguish by morphology, and their genes often share 90% sequence similarity, they can differ in host plant specificity and life style. FFC species can also produce structurally diverse secondary metabolites (SMs), including the mycotoxins fumonisins, fusarins, fusaric acid, and beauvericin, and the phytohormones gibberellins, auxins, and cytokinins.

The importance of the Gallus gallus (chicken) as a model organism and agricultural animal merits a continuation of sequence assembly improvement efforts. We present a new version of the chicken genome assembly (Gallus_gallus-5.0; GCA_000002315.3), built from combined long single molecule sequencing technology, finished BACs, and improved physical maps. In overall assembled bases, we see a gain of 183 Mb, including 16.4 Mb in placed chromosomes with a corresponding gain in the percentage of intact repeat elements characterized.

Clock genes have been shown to be important in regulating many key agronomic traits. Therefore, identifying new players in this interconnected clock network will provide novel strategies toward developing new crop varieties. Our study identifies CONSTANS-LIKE 3 (COL3) as a critical protein-binding partner for B-BOX32 (BBX32) action in Arabidopsis. The discovery of the interaction with COL3 provides molecular clues as to how BBX32 exerts its effects on growth and yield

Leaves are the primary source of photoassimilate in crop plants. A precise understanding of the genetic architecture underlying leaf morphology is critical to engineering climate-resilient crop varieties. An ideal cotton cultivar would produce a lower canopy of broad, normal leaves before transitioning to an upper canopy of highly lobed, okra leaves. Here we show that the major leaf shapes of cotton are controlled by the okra locus,

Differences in drought stress tolerance within diverse rice genotypes have been attributed to genetic diversity and epigenetic alterations. DNA methylation is an important epigenetic modification that influences diverse biological processes, but its effects on rice drought stress tolerance are poorly understood. In this study, methylated DNA immunoprecipitation sequencing and an Affymetrix GeneChip rice genome array were used to profile the DNA methylation patterns and transcriptomes of the drought-tolerant introgression line DK151 and its drought-sensitive recurrent parent IR64 under drought and control conditions

Rice blast is a destructive disease caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, and it has a large impact on rice production worldwide. Compared with leaf blast resistance, our understanding of panicle blast resistance is limited. The japonica landrace Jiangnanwan from Taihu Lake region in China shows highly resistance to panicle and leaf blast. In this study, three generations (F2:5, F2:6, F2:7) consisting of 221 RILs (recombination inbreeding lines), developed from the cross of Jiangnanwan and Suyunuo,

Allelic variants of the broad-spectrum blast resistance gene, Pi9 (nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat region) have been analyzed in Indian rice landraces. They were selected from the list of 338 rice landraces phenotyped in the rice blast nursery at central Rainfed Upland Rice Research Station, Hazaribag. Six of them were further selected on the basis of their resistance and susceptible pattern for virulence analysis and selective pattern study of Pi9 gene. The sequence analysis and phylogenetic study illustrated that such sequences are vastly homologous and clustered into two groups.

Nutritional conditions during early development influence the plastic expression of adult phenotypes. Because heightened nutrition sensitivity often characterizes the development of exaggerated traits, there should be molecular mechanisms underlying trait-specific variability. This study reveals the molecular mechanisms underlying the expression of nutrition-sensitive mandibles in the beetle Gnatocerus cornutus. We found that epigenetic regulators, such as histone deacetylases (HDACs) and polycomb group (PcG) proteins, contribute specifically to the plastic expression of male mandibles, with little contribution to other body modules.

New discoveries have been continuously made in recent years on the roles of noncoding RNAs in regulating biological processes. Phased small-interfering RNAs (phasiRNAs) may be the newest member discovered in recent years. The photoperiod-sensitive male sterility (PSMS) rice is a very valuable germplasm that started the era of two-line hybrid rice. Here we show that phasiRNAs generated by a long-noncoding RNA PMS1T encoded by the Pms1 locus regulates PSMS in rice.

Ectopic expression of the MYB transcription factor of AmROSEA1 from Antirrhinum majus has been reported to change anthocyanin and other metabolites in several species. In this study, we found that overexpression of AmRosea1 significantly improved the tolerance of transgenic rice to drought and salinity stresses. Transcriptome analysis revealed that a considerable number of stress-related genes were affected by exogenous AmRosea1 during both drought and salinity stress treatments.