Construction of a high-density genetic linkage map and QTL mapping for bioenergy-related traits in sweet sorghum [ (L.) Moench].

Sorghum is an important but arguably undervalued cereal crop, grown in large areas in Asia and Africa due to its natural resilience to drought and heat. There is growing demand for sweet sorghum as a source of bioethanol as well as food and feed. The improvement of bioenergy-related traits directly affects bioethanol production from sweet sorghum; therefore, understanding the genetic basis of these traits would enable new cultivars to be developed for bioenergy production.

Biomedical Applications of Microfluidic Devices: A Review.

Both passive and active microfluidic chips are used in many biomedical and chemical applications to support fluid mixing, particle manipulations, and signal detection. Passive microfluidic devices are geometry-dependent, and their uses are rather limited. Active microfluidic devices include sensors or detectors that transduce chemical, biological, and physical changes into electrical or optical signals.

Breeding history for shattering trait in sesame: classic to genomic approach.

Sesame is an important oilseed crop that has high oil and protein content and unique antioxidant lignans. Capsule shattering at harvest is one of the most important problems affecting sesame production, with seed losses of up to 50%, making the crop unsuitable for mechanized harvesting. This paper provides an overview of breeding approaches addressing the capsule shattering trait in sesame and gives an outlook about the future perspectives of improvement for this trait.

Comparative Analysis of Coding and Non-Coding Features within Insect Tolerance Loci in Wheat with Their Homologs in Cereal Genomes.

Food insecurity and malnutrition have reached critical levels with increased human population, climate fluctuations, water shortage; therefore, higher-yielding crops are in the spotlight of numerous studies. Abiotic factors affect the yield of staple food crops; among all, wheat stem sawfly ( Norton) and orange wheat blossom midge () are two of the most economically and agronomically harmful insect pests which cause yield loss in cereals, especially in wheat in North America. There is no effective strategy for suppressing this pest damage yet, and only the plants with intrinsic tolerance mechanisms such as solid stem phenotypes for and antixenosis and/or antibiosis mechanisms for can limit damage.

Discovery of Ganoderma lucidum triterpenoids as potential inhibitors against Dengue virus NS2B-NS3 protease.

Dengue virus (DENV) infection causes serious health problems in humans for which no drug is currently available. Recently, DENV NS2B-NS3 protease has been proposed as a primary target for anti-dengue drug discovery due to its important role in new virus particle formation by conducting DENV polyprotein cleavage. Triterpenoids from the medicinal fungus Ganoderma lucidum have been suggested as pharmacologically bioactive compounds and tested as anti-viral agents against various viral pathogens including human immunodeficiency virus.

Comparison of different annotation tools for characterization of the complete chloroplast genome of Corylus avellana cv Tombul.

Background: Several bioinformatics tools have been designed for assembly and annotation of chloroplast (cp) genomes, making it difficult to decide which is most useful and applicable to a specific case. The increasing number of plant genomes provide an opportunity to accurately obtain cp genomes from whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequences. Due to the limited genetic information available for European hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.

A Comprehensive Prescription for Plant miRNA Identification.

microRNAs (miRNAs) are tiny ribo-regulatory molecules involved in various essential pathways for persistence of cellular life, such as development, environmental adaptation, and stress response. In recent years, miRNAs have become a major focus in molecular biology because of their functional and diagnostic importance. This interest in miRNA research has resulted in the development of many specific software and pipelines for the identification of miRNAs and their specific targets, which is the key for the elucidation of miRNA-modulated gene expression.

Assessment of a direct hybridization microarray strategy for comprehensive monitoring of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Detection of GMO material in crop and food samples is the primary step in GMO monitoring and regulation, with the increasing number of GM events in the world market requiring detection solutions with high multiplexing capacity. In this study, we test the suitability of a high-density oligonucleotide microarray platform for direct, quantitative detection of GMOs found in the Turkish feed market. We tested 1830 different 60nt probes designed to cover the GM cassettes from 12 different GM cultivars (3 soya, 9 maize), as well as plant species-specific and contamination controls, and developed a data analysis method aiming to provide maximum throughput and sensitivity.

DNA extraction techniques compared for accurate detection of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in maize food and feed products.

In this paper, DNA extraction methods have been evaluated to detect the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in maize food and feed products commercialised in Turkey. All the extraction methods tested performed well for the majority of maize foods and feed products analysed. However, the highest DNA content was achieved by the Wizard, Genespin or the CTAB method, all of which produced optimal DNA yield and purity for different maize food and feed products.

Molecular organization and comparative analysis of chromosome 5B of the wild wheat ancestor Triticum dicoccoides.

Wild emmer wheat, Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides is the wild relative of Triticum turgidum, the progenitor of durum and bread wheat, and maintains a rich allelic diversity among its wild populations. The lack of adequate genetic and genomic resources, however, restricts its exploitation in wheat improvement.

The physical map of wheat chromosome 5DS revealed gene duplications and small rearrangements.

Background: The substantially large bread wheat genome, organized into highly similar three sub-genomes, renders genomic research challenging. The construction of BAC-based physical maps of individual chromosomes reduces the complexity of this allohexaploid genome, enables elucidation of gene space and evolutionary relationships, provides tools for map-based cloning, and serves as a framework for reference sequencing efforts. In this study, we constructed the first comprehensive physical map of wheat chromosome arm 5DS, thereby exploring its gene space organization and evolution.

Sequencing chromosome 5D of Aegilops tauschii and comparison with its allopolyploid descendant bread wheat (Triticum aestivum).

Flow cytometric sorting of individual chromosomes and chromosome-based sequencing reduces the complexity of large, repetitive Triticeae genomes. We flow-sorted chromosome 5D of Aegilops tauschii, the D genome donor of bread wheat and sequenced it by Roche 454 GS FLX platform to approximately 2.2x coverage.