News by Subject Biology

Most people associate the idea of creatures trapped in amber with insects or spiders, which are preserved lifelike in fossil tree resin. An international research team of paleontologists and biologists from the universities of Göttingen and Helsinki, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York has now discovered the oldest slime mold identified to date. The fossil is about 100 million years old and is exquisitely preserved in amber from Myanmar. The results have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Like most plants, soybeans pair up with soil fungi in a symbiotic mycorrhizal relationship. In exchange for a bit of sugar, the fungus acts as an extension of the root system to pull in more phosphorus, nitrogen, micronutrients, and water than the plant could on its own.

Until recently, Stemphylium leaf blight has been considered a minor foliar disease as it has not done much damage in New York since the early 1990s. However, onion growers in New York have recently seen an increase in the dieback of their crops, and scientists at Cornell University were surprised to discover that SLB was the cause.

Scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) and the G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (FEB RAS) together with German colleagues spotted six new and three already known biologically active compounds in a new strain of the fungus Penicillium piltunense first time isolated. One compound has a pronounced anti-inflammatory activity, others have herbicidal potential, i.e., possibly, can become components of new chemicals for weed control. A related study is published in Marine Drugs.

An enormous library of products derived from more than 10,000 fungi could help us find new drugs. Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute, Westerdijk Institute and Utrecht University have set up this library and screened it for biologically active compounds. The researchers identified various known compounds, among which the cholesterol lowering drug lovastatin. The results of this research were published on the Nov. 26 in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

Lichens -- a combo of fungus and algae -- can grow on bare rocks, so scientists thought that lichens were some of the first organisms to make their way onto land from the water, changing the planet's atmosphere and paving the way for modern plants. But a closer look at the DNA of the algae and fungi that form lichens shows that lichens likely evolved millions of years after plants.

A recent Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions article studies chitin-binding proteins from a soilborne fungus (Verticillium nonalfalfae) that causes vascular wilt in plants. This fungus binds a particular protein (VnaChtBP) to chitin in order to abolish the host plant's chitin-triggered burst of reactive oxygen species and shield the fungus from being digested by the plant.

Corn is a staple feed and biofuel crop with a value close to $3.7 billion in the Michigan economy alone. However, knowledge about seedling pathogens in Michigan corn fields is limited. A group of scientists at Michigan State University set out to gain a better understanding of the composition of seedling pathogens, with results that will aid disease management research not only in corn but in rotational crops such as soybean and wheat.