Habitat Suitability and Establishment Limitations of a Problematic Liana.

The US native liana, poison ivy ), responsible for contact dermatitis in humans, is a competitive weed with great potential for expansion in disturbed habitats. To facilitate a better understanding of this threat, we sought to evaluate habitat suitability, population demography, and biotic interactions of poison ivy, using a series of complementary field studies in the two habitats where it most commonly occurs-forest interiors and edges. Of the 2500 seeds planted across both habitats, poison ivy initially colonized forest interiors (32% emergence) at a higher rate than edge habitats (16.

Poison ivy hairy root cultures enable a stable transformation system suitable for detailed investigation of urushiol metabolism.

Poison ivy () is best known for causing exasperating allergenic delayed-contact dermatitis symptoms that last for weeks on persons who have contacted the plant. Urushiols are alkylcatechols produced by poison ivy responsible for causing this dermatitis. While urushiol chemical structures are well known, the metabolic intermediates and genes responsible for their biosynthesis have not been experimentally validated.

Accession-Level Differentiation of Urushiol Levels, and Identification of Cardanols in Nascent Emerged Poison Ivy Seedlings.

Poison ivy ( (L.) Kuntze) shows accession-level differentiation in a variety of morphometric traits, suggesting local adaptation. To investigate whether the presumed defense compound urushiol also demonstrates accession-level accumulation differences, in vitro nascent germinated poison ivy seedlings from geographically isolated populations were germinated in vitro and then assayed for known urushiol congener accumulation levels.

Sequencing and De Novo Assembly of the Toxicodendron radicans (Poison Ivy) Transcriptome.

Contact with poison ivy plants is widely dreaded because they produce a natural product called urushiol that is responsible for allergenic contact delayed-dermatitis symptoms lasting for weeks. For this reason, the catchphrase most associated with poison ivy is "leaves of three, let it be", which serves the purpose of both identification and an appeal for avoidance. Ironically, despite this notoriety, there is a dearth of specific knowledge about nearly all other aspects of poison ivy physiology and ecology.

MALDI-MS Imaging of Urushiols in Poison Ivy Stem.

Urushiols are the allergenic components of (poison ivy) as well as other Toxicodendron species. They are alk-(en)-yl catechol derivatives with a 15- or 17-carbon side chain having different degrees of unsaturation. Although several methods have been developed for analysis of urushiols in plant tissues, the in situ localization of the different urushiol congeners has not been reported.