400 research outputs found
INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT OF THE BOXWOOD LEAFMINER
Landscape managers need durable, effective, and safe methods for
controlling key pests of valued plants in both landscape and nursery
settings. The boxwood leafminer (Monarthropalpus flavus, Diptera:
Cecidomyiidae) is a serious pest of boxwoods. Boxwoods (Buxus sp.) are a
key plant in suburban Maryland landscapes. They are the second most
common woody ornamental plant in these settings. In a recent study almost
43% of boxwoods surveyed required treatment for leafminer infestation.
Boxwood leafminers also pose a serious problem in historical gardens, such
as Longwood Gardens, PA, Dumbarton Oaks and the US National
Arboretum in Washington, DC. At the present time, there is a lack of a comprehensive, environmentally sound, management program for the
boxwood leafminer.
The first step toward an effective management strategy is a better
understanding of the boxwood leafminer's life cycle. Over the summers of
1994-1995, leafminer populations were surveyed and life cycles documented
and correlated with growing degree days. The first growing degree day
developmental chart for boxwood leafminer was developed.
Various pesticides were tested in 1995. Different chemicals and
application times were evaluated for control of both adults and larvae. At
present it appears that application of a translaminar pesticide such as Avid
or Merit at adult emergence (growing degree day 352) provides the best
control.
Resistant cultivars appear to be the most durable, simplest method to
control the leafminer. Some cultivars.are highly resistant to boxwood
leafminer attack while others are highly susceptible. The third goal of my
project was to identify resistant cultivars. This was accomplished by first
observing natural variation in leafminer populations in the field. Next I
caged ovipositing adults on terminal branches of various cultivars of
boxwood, and measured survival of larvae. All cultivars received heavy oviposition with equal frequency, although survival rates were very
different.
Finally, I tested the hypothesis that leafminers could discriminate
among resistant and susceptible cultivars. To test this emerging adults
were caged with different cultivars of boxwood and allowed to select plants
for oviposition. Plants were then analyzed to determine acceptance of
various host plants. I found that although survival on different cultivars
can vary dramatically, leafminers were unable to distinguish between
suitable and unsuitable host plants
The Reactome BioMart
Reactome is an open source, expert-authored, manually curated and peer-reviewed database of reactions, pathways and biological processes. We provide an intuitive web-based user interface to pathway knowledge and a suite of data analysis tools. The Reactome BioMart provides biologists and bioinformaticians with a single web interface for performing simple or elaborate queries of the Reactome database, aggregating data from different sources and providing an opportunity to integrate experimental and computational results with information relating to biological pathways. Database URL: http://www.reactome.org
Evidence that two phenotypically distinct mouse PKD mutations, bpk and jcpk, are allelic
Evidence that two phenotypically distinct mouse PKD mutations, bpk and jcpk, are allelic. Numerous mouse models of polycystic kidney disease (PKD) have been described. All of these diseases are transmitted as single recessive traits and in most, the phenotypic severity is influenced by the genetic background. However, based on their genetic map positions, none of these loci appears to be allelic and none are candidate modifier loci for any other mouse PKD mutation. Previously, we have described the mouse bpk mutation, a model that closely resembles human autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease. We now report that the bpk mutation maps to a 1.6 CM interval on mouse Chromosome 10, and that the renal cystic disease severity in our intersubspecific intercross progeny is influenced by the genetic background. Interestingly, bpk co-localizes with jcpk, a phenotyp-ically-distinct PKD mutation, and complementation testing indicates that the bpk and jcpk mutations are allelic. These data imply that distinct PKD phenotypes can result from different mutations within a single gene. In addition, based on its map position, the bpk locus is a candidate genetic modifier for jck, a third phenotypically-distinct PKD mutation
Chromosomal localization of the transcription factor YY1 in the mouse and human
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47010/1/335_2004_Article_BF00360552.pd
Reactome: a knowledgebase of biological pathways
Reactome, located at http://www.reactome.org is a curated, peer-reviewed resource of human biological processes. Given the genetic makeup of an organism, the complete set of possible reactions constitutes its reactome. The basic unit of the Reactome database is a reaction; reactions are then grouped into causal chains to form pathways. The Reactome data model allows us to represent many diverse processes in the human system, including the pathways of intermediary metabolism, regulatory pathways, and signal transduction, and high-level processes, such as the cell cycle. Reactome provides a qualitative framework, on which quantitative data can be superimposed. Tools have been developed to facilitate custom data entry and annotation by expert biologists, and to allow visualization and exploration of the finished dataset as an interactive process map. Although our primary curational domain is pathways from Homo sapiens, we regularly create electronic projections of human pathways onto other organisms via putative orthologs, thus making Reactome relevant to model organism research communities. The database is publicly available under open source terms, which allows both its content and its software infrastructure to be freely used and redistributed
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