The role of Fusarium mycotoxins in seedling infection of soybeans, wheat and maize

Fusarium graminearum and Fusarium verticillioides are fungal plant pathogens that can cause yield losses, reductions in grain quality, and produce mycotoxins that can cause serious diseases in animals and humans when contaminated grain is consumed. Both pathogens can infect and cause disease in seedlings. F. graminearum infects cereals and other crops and produces mycotoxins including deoxynivalenol (DON), which can act as a virulence factor for Gibberella ear rot in maize and head blight of wheat. F. verticillioides infects maize and produces fumonisins, a group of mycotoxins with phytotoxic properties. Previous research into the role of these mycotoxins in seedling diseases has been conflicting. To assess the roles of deoxynivalenol and fumonisins in seedling disease, wild-type and mycotoxin non-producing mutants of both fungi were used to inoculate seeds in rolled-towel experiments. F. verticillioides isolates were used to infect dent and sweet varieties of maize while F. graminearum isolates were used to infect dent maize, soybeans and wheat. Plant weights, shoot lengths and disease severity (soybean only) were measured at 7 days. Additionally, infection levels were compared by quantifying fungal biomass present in plant tissue between fungal isolates using qPCR. Finally, an experiment to determine changes in gene expression in maize inbred B73 when infected with wild-type or deoxynivalenol non-producing isolates of F. graminearum was performed to better understand the infection process and response of the plant to DON. Results of experiments with F. graminearum differed among the varieties for all crop species. In soybean, only the susceptible cultivar demonstrated significant differences between plants inoculated with the wild-type and the DON non-producing mutant for plant weight and length. In wheat, the wild type, but not the mutant, caused reductions in weight and length in the susceptible cultivar. The partially resistant variety was reduced in plant weight by both isolates, but neither isolate reduced shoot or root length. In maize, the wild type and the mutant had an impact on shoot length and plant weight for all three hybrids tested. In one susceptible hybrid the wild-type caused greater effects than the DON non-producing mutant. Results indicate that DON production is not required for pathogenicity in seedlings, but the wild-type isolate generally produced greater symptoms and there are interactions between host genotype and DON effects. Gene expression changes in maize in response to infection with wild-type and a DON- mutant revealed that different genes were expressed during early infection and plant germination in comparison to genes expressed after 7 days. There were minimal differences between the wild-type and the mutant isolates for any of the time points sampled. There were greater differences between wild-type infected plants and mock-inoculated plants. Experiments with Fusarium verticillioides in sweet and dent maize did not provide conclusive results about the effects of fumonisins on seedling disease. For hybrid dent maize, shoot length and plant weight were reduced by only two out of ten isolates tested, regardless of fumonisin production. Fungal biomass was higher in the root tissues than mesocotyl tissues but did not show consistent differences between fumonisin producing and non-producing isolates. In sweet maize there were no significant differences in plant weight or shoot length between plants inoculated with fumonisin-producing and non-producing isolates. All isolates were significantly different from the control for both plant weight and shoot length. Fungal biomass quantification for F. verticillioides in sweet maize was highly variable but fumonisin-producing strains did not consistently colonize the plant tissue to a greater extent than non-producing strains

Are Teens Able to Articulate a Biblical Understanding of Christianity?

The following study uses previous research about the religious and spiritual lives of American adolescents and their beliefs about the Christian faith to survey teenagers at a mid-western, Christian high school. The survey is given to find out what our young people know to be true about Christianity and if they can accurately articulate their beliefs based on Scripture and reinforced in the Heidelberg Catechism. According to the research, the students surveyed are receiving the information they need to articulate a biblical definition of Christianity. They do, however, have their strengths and weaknesses. The weakest areas would be in the belief that we are born with a sinful nature and it is our responsibility to share Christ with others . The students\u27 strongest areas were that the Bible is the inspired Word of God , God is the Creator of the universe and of all things good and Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God while He lived on earth. He was crucified and arose from the dead three days later . Using this research as a baseline for where our adolescents are will help us as parents and teachers to re-examine what we are teaching and modeling. Where do we need to make improvements

Linear resolutions of powers and products

The goal of this paper is to present examples of families of homogeneous ideals in the polynomial ring over a field that satisfy the following condition: every product of ideals of the family has a linear free resolution. As we will see, this condition is strongly correlated to good primary decompositions of the products and good homological and arithmetical properties of the associated multi-Rees algebras. The following families will be discussed in detail: polymatroidal ideals, ideals generated by linear forms and Borel fixed ideals of maximal minors. The main tools are Gr\"obner bases and Sagbi deformation

Gattungshistorische Überlegungen mit Einzelstudien zur Epik des italienischen Quattrocento und der französischen Renaissance

Das vorliegende Working Paper untersucht transhistorische Filiationen aktualitätsepischen Schreibens von der Antike bis in die Frühe Neuzeit. Ausgehend von purifizierend vereinfachenden Grundannahmen der Moderne, die das Epos allein auf ideologiestabilisierende Narrative einer mythhistorischen Vorzeit beschränken (z.B. Bachtin), sollen hier zum einen die seit der Antike bestehende und in ihrer Quantität bedeutsame Tradition von zeithistorischer Epik und zum anderen anhand ausgewählter Epen, insbesondere aus dem italienischen Quattrocento und der französischen Renaissance, die zuweilen sehr produktive Spannung zwischen ‚alter‘ literarischer Gattung und ‚neuem‘ historischen Stoff aufgezeigt werden. Das Working Paper erweitert damit die Perspektive des Teilprojekts 03 („Die Pistole des Mars“) im Hinblick auf andere zeitliche und räumliche Kontexte. Die exemplarischen Studien sollen zeigen, dass der Rekurs auf die epische(n) Gattungstradition(en) keineswegs einheitlich ist, sondern äußerst heterogen ausfällt. Neben dem vergilischen Paradigma eines herrschaftspanegyrischen, teleologischen Großnarrativs mit einer theologisch-heilsgeschichtlichen Komponente (Tito Strozzi, Borsias), lässt sich ebenso aufgrund des zunehmenden Interesses an der griechischen Literatur im 15. Jahrhundert eine Homerisierung der Epik feststellen (Basinio da Parma, Hesperis). Die Epik Frankreichs rezipiert zudem die Ritterstoffe des Mittelalters und koppelt diese mit den antiken Mustern (Sébastien Garnier, Henriade). Schließlich bildet die Bürgerkriegsepik Lucans einen virulenten Bezugspunkt in der Verarbeitung des französischen Konfessionskonflikts (Paulus Thomas, Lutetias)

A simultaneous generalization of independence and disjointness in boolean algebras

We give a definition of some classes of boolean algebras generalizing free boolean algebras; they satisfy a universal property that certain functions extend to homomorphisms. We give a combinatorial property of generating sets of these algebras, which we call n-independent. The properties of these classes (n-free and omega-free boolean algebras) are investigated. These include connections to hypergraph theory and cardinal invariants on these algebras. Related cardinal functions, $n$Ind, which is the supremum of the cardinalities of n-independent subsets; i_n, the minimum size of a maximal n-independent subset; and i_omega, the minimum size of an omega-independent subset, are introduced and investigated. The values of i_n and i_omega on P(omega)/fin are shown to be independent of ZFC.Comment: Sumbitted to Orde