Caffeine fostering of mycoparasitic fungi against phytopathogens.

Caffeine (1,3,7-trimethixanthine) is a typical purine alkaloid produced in more than 80 plant species. Its biological role is considered to strengthen plant's defense capabilities, directly as a toxicant to biotic attackers (allelopathy) and indirectly as an activator of defense system (priming). Caffeine is actively secreted into rhizosphere through primary root, and possibly affects the structure of microbe community nearby.

Keratocytes derived from spheroid culture of corneal stromal cells resemble tissue resident keratocytes.

Purpose: Corneal stromal cells transform to precursor cells in spheroid culture. We determined whether keratocytes derived from spheroid culture of murine corneal stromal cells resemble tissue resident keratocytes.

Methods: Spheroid culture was performed by seeding dissociated stromal cells onto ultra-low attachment plates containing serum-free mesenchymal stem cell culture medium.

Heritable variation in the inflorescence replacement program of Arabidopsis thaliana.

Owing to their sessile habits and trophic position within global ecosystems, higher plants display a sundry assortment of adaptations to the threat of predation. Unlike animals, nearly all higher plants can replace reproductive structures lost to predators by activating reserved growing points called axillary meristems. As the first step in a program aimed at defining the genetic architecture of the inflorescence replacement program (IRP) of Arabidopsis thaliana, we describe the results of a quantitative germplasm survey of developmental responses to loss of the primary reproductive axis.

Epigenetic inheritance in rice plants.

Background And Aims: Epigenetics is defined as mechanisms that regulate gene expression without base sequence alteration. One molecular basis is considered to be DNA cytosine methylation, which reversibly modifies DNA or chromatin structures. Although its correlation with epigenetic inheritance over generations has been circumstantially shown, evidence at the gene level has been limited.