Putting 'X' into Context: The Diversity of ' Phytoplasma pruni' Strains Associated with the Induction of X-Disease.

Recurrent epiphytotics of X-disease, caused by ' Phytoplasma pruni,' have inflicted significant losses on commercial cherry and peach production across North America in the last century. During this period, there have been multiple studies reporting different disease phenotypes and, more recently, identifying different strains through sequencing core genes, but the symptoms have not, to date, been linked with genotype. Therefore, in this study we collected and assessed differing disease phenotypes from multiple U.

First Report of Aloe vera Rust Caused by Uromyces aloes in an Ornamental Nursery in the United States.

Aloe vera (L.) Burm. f.

Clinical And Morphological Improvement Of Lupus Nephritis Treated With Rituximab.

Aim: TO assess the effects of rituximab (RTM) therapy on clinical and morphologic activity of lupus nephritis (LN).

Material And Methods: The study included 45 patients with confirmed diagnosis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), unaffected by previously received standard therapy with glucocorticoids (GCs) and cytostatics. The disease activity was assessed using Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Disease Activity Index 2000 (SLEDAI 2K); to assess the LN activity we used the SLICC RA/RE index.

Some peculiarities of pulmonary clearance mechanisms in rats after intratracheal instillation of magnetite (Fe3O4) suspensions with different particle sizes in the nanometer and micrometer ranges: are we defenseless against nanoparticles?

We studied differences between phagocytic responses to nanoparticles (NPs) versus microparticles in the pulmonary region by synthesizing magnetite of different sizes and instilling suspensions of these particles intratracheally into rats' lungs. Ten and 50 nm particles caused a greater increase in cell counts of the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) than the instillation of microparticles. The response to 10 nm particles was weaker than to 50 nm ones, and the smaller NPs were more cytotoxic; both were more cytotoxic than the microparticles.

Ratios of Cells With and Without Virulence Genes in Rhodococcus fascians Populations Correlate with Degrees of Symptom Development.

Rhodococcus fascians, a gram-positive phytopathogenic bacterium, causes fasciation and leafy galls on a wide range of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants for which it requires the plasmid-borne fas operon. Strains isolated from symptomatic plants over a 20-year-period exhibited a high degree of variability when their virulence was assessed on garden pea seedlings. Polymerase chain reaction amplification of the fas-1 and fasR virulence genes from randomly chosen single colonies showed that many strains consisted of two subpopulations, of which one had lost these genes.