Publications by authors named "Andy Corran"

Article Synopsis
  • Glycosyl-inositol-phospho-ceramides (GIPCs) are important lipids in plant and fungal membranes that help with stress adaptation, but analyzing them is complicated due to extraction challenges.
  • A new method was developed using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry to quickly and sensitively identify GIPCs in common fungal pathogens like Botrytis cinerea and Fusarium graminearium.
  • The findings showed distinct GIPC signatures in the analyzed fungi, indicating that the MALDI-TOF technique is effective for detecting these lipids in filamentous fungi.
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Crop protection anilinopyrimidine (AP) fungicides were introduced more than 20 years ago for the control of a range of diseases caused by ascomycete plant pathogens, and in particular for the control of gray mold caused by . Although early mode of action studies suggested an inhibition of methionine biosynthesis, the molecular target of this class of fungicides was never fully clarified. Despite AP-specific resistance having been described in .

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A novel class of experimental fungicides has been discovered, which consists of special quinolin-6-yloxyacetamides. They are highly active against important phytopathogens, such as Phytophthora infestans (potato and tomato late blight), Mycosphaerella graminicola (wheat leaf blotch) and Uncinula necator (grape powdery mildew). Their fungicidal activity is due to their ability to inhibit fungal tubulin polymerization, leading to microtubule destabilization.

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The extreme resistance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to copper is overcome by 2-(6-benzyl-2-pyridyl)quinazoline (BPQ), providing a chemical-biology tool which has been exploited in two lines of discovery. First, BPQ is shown to form a red (BPQ)2 Cu(I) complex and promote Ctr1-independent copper-accumulation in whole cells and in mitochondria isolated from treated cells. Multiple phenotypes, including loss of aconitase activity, are consistent with copper-BPQ mediated damage to mitochondrial iron-sulphur clusters.

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A novel class of experimental fungicides has been discovered, which consists of special tetrasubstituted imidazoles. They are highly active against important phytopathogens, such as Botrytis cinerea (grey mould), Uncinula necator (grape powdery mildew), Mycosphaerella graminicola (wheat leaf blotch) and Alternaria solani (potato and tomato early blight). Their fungicidal efficacy is due to their ability to promote fungal tubulin polymerization, which leads to a disruption of microtubule dynamics.

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Cell integrity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is ensured by a rigid cell wall whose synthesis is controlled by a highly conserved MAP kinase signal transduction cascade. Stress at the cell surface is detected by a set of sensors and ultimately transmitted through this cascade to the transcription factor Rlm1, which governs expression of many genes encoding enzymes of cell wall biosynthesis. We here report on a number of versatile reporter constructs which link activation of a hybrid, Rlm1-lexA, by the MAP kinase Mpk1/Slt2 to the expression of the bacterial lacZ gene.

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