Development of morbidity and mortality of SARS-CoV-2 in nursing homes for the elderly in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2020-2022: What protective measures are still required?

Introduction: Nursing-home residents are among the highest risk group in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. At the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the majority of all deaths from or with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in long-term care facilities (LTCFs), so that maximum protective measures were mandated for these facilities. This study analyzed the impact of the new virus variants and the vaccination campaign on disease severity and mortality among nursing home residents and staff through 2022 as a basis for determining which protective measures remain necessary and appropriate.

Organic nitrogen enhances nitrogen nutrition and early growth of Pinus sylvestris seedlings.

Boreal trees are capable of taking up organic nitrogen (N) as effectively as inorganic N. Depending on the abundance of soil N forms, plants may adjust physiological and morphological traits to optimize N uptake. However, the link between these traits and N uptake in response to soil N sources is poorly understood.

Hexokinase 1 is required for glucose-induced repression of bZIP63, At5g22920, and BT2 in Arabidopsis.

Simple sugars, like glucose (Glc) and sucrose (Suc), act as signals to modulate the expression of hundreds of genes in plants. Frequently, however, it remains unclear whether this regulation is induced by the sugars themselves or by their derivatives generated in the course of carbohydrate (CH) metabolism. In the present study, we tested the relevance of different CH metabolism and allocation pathways affecting expression patterns of five selected sugar-responsive genes (bZIP63, At5g22920, BT2, MGD2, and TPS9) in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Functional dissection of sugar signals affecting gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Background: Sugars modulate expression of hundreds of genes in plants. Previous studies on sugar signaling, using intact plants or plant tissues, were hampered by tissue heterogeneity, uneven sugar transport and/or inter-conversions of the applied sugars. This, in turn, could obscure the identity of a specific sugar that acts as a signal affecting expression of given gene in a given tissue or cell-type.

Plant-growth promoting effect of newly isolated rhizobacteria varies between two Arabidopsis ecotypes.

Various rhizobacteria are known for their beneficial effects on plants, i. e. promotion of growth and induction of systemic resistance against pathogens.

A naturally associated rhizobacterium of Arabidopsis thaliana induces a starvation-like transcriptional response while promoting growth.

Plant growth promotion by rhizobacteria is a known phenomenon but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. We searched for plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria that are naturally associated with Arabidopsis thaliana to investigate the molecular mechanisms that are involved in plant growth-promotion. We isolated a Pseudomonas bacterium (Pseudomonas sp.

Microbacterium yannicii sp. nov., isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana roots.

Bacterial strain G72T was isolated from surface-sterilized roots of Arabidopsis thaliana growing in its natural habitat. This Gram-positive, rod-shaped, non-motile, microaerophilic and aerobically growing isolate was characterized by using a polyphasic approach. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain G72T belongs to the genus Microbacterium.

Transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis clubroots indicate a key role for cytokinins in disease development.

The clubroot disease of the family Brassicaceae is caused by the obligate biotrophic protist Plasmodiophora brassicae. Infected roots undergo a developmental switch that results in the formation of aberrant roots (clubs). To investigate host gene expression during the development of the disease, we have used the Arabidopsis ATH1 genome array.