First report of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides causing anthracnose on grapevine (Vitis vinifera) in Shaanxi province, China.

Grape anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum spp. is an economically important disease in most vineyards during rainy and humid weather. In June 2021, widespread anthracnose was observed in leaves of Vitis vinifera cv. Red Globe in Yangling city (latitude = 34.28, longitude = 108.07), Shaanxi Province. Diseased plants exhibited circular brown necrotic lesions with yellow borders in young leaves (Fig. 1A). Approximately 80% of the 75 grape plants showed disease symptoms that were consistent with those previously reported for anthracnose on grape caused by C. acutatum, C. gloeosporioides, and C. viniferum (Hong et al. 2008; Oo and Oh 2017). To isolate the pathogen, ten diseased leaves were collected. Small pieces (0.5 mm × 0.5 mm) of symptomatic tissue were surface sterilized with 75% alcohol for 30 s, transferred to 4% NaClO for 2 min, and then washed twice with sterile distilled water. The pathogen was isolated and cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA) at 25 °C with a 12 h light/dark photoperiod. Hyphal tips of the isolate were transferred to fresh PDA after 1 day. Acervuli were formed after 15 days on PDA. The colonies were single-spored to obtain pure cultures. Pure cultures on PDA appear white to grey, and the reverse of the colonies was olive gray or yellowish white (Fig. 1B, C). Conidia were single-celled, hyaline, straight cylindrical with ends rounded, and measured 12.50 to 17.78 µm (length) (mean=15.19 µm, n=50) × 3.66 to 5.82 µm (width) (mean=4.48 µm, n=50) (Fig. 1D). The morphological characteristics matched the previous descriptions of C. gloeosporioides by Sawant et al. (2012). For molecular identification, genomic DNA was extracted from isolate YLRG13, and the actin (ACT), internal transcribed spacer (ITS), and beta-tubulin (TUB2) were amplified using the primer pairs ACT-512F/ACT-783R (Carbone and Kohn 1999), ITS1F/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), and T1/T2 (O' Donnell and Cigelnik 1997), respectively. The ACT (OQ031183 and MZ686707), ITS (OP999326 and MZ669974), and TUB2 (OQ031184 and MZ686708) nucleotide sequences of isolates YLRG5 and YLRG13 were deposited in GenBank. BLASTn showed 99 to 100% similarity with C. gloeosporioides. Neighbor-joining trees based on the three genes was constructed using PAUP version 4.0b10. The results showed the isolated YLRG5 and YLRG13 from V. vinifera was closely related to C. gloeosporioides with high bootstrap values (Fig. S2). Pathogenicity testing was performed with isolate YLRG13 by 10 µL conidial suspension (4×108 conidia/ml) on the surfaces of five wounded detached leaves of six-year-old Vitis vinifera cv. Red Globe. Sterile distilled water was used as a control. Inoculated plants were placed in a humid chamber at 25 °C. Conidial germination was observed at 24 hours post-inoculation (Fig. S1E). Four days after inoculation, typical anthracnose symptoms developed on inoculated grape leaves (Fig. S1F). No symptoms were observed on the controls. The fungus reisolated from the symptomatic grape leaves showed the same morphological characteristics of the inoculated isolate, fulfilling Koch's postulates. To our knowledge, this is the first report of grape anthracnose caused by C. gloeosporioides in Northwestern of China. C. gloeosporioides was reported causing anthracnose on a wide variety of horticultural crops, such as almond, avocado, apple, banana, cashew, citrus, cucumber, grape, guava, mango, onion, papaya, passion fruit, pepper, strawberry, tomato, and watermelon (Sharma and Kulshrestha 2015), suggesting the potential cross-infection between grape and other horticultural crops.

Delivery Mechanism of the Pharmaceutical Complex of Genistein-Adenine Based on Spectroscopic and Molecular Modelling at Atomic Scale.

Genistein (GS) exhibits various biological activities, but its clinical application is limited because of the low bioavailability. In this study, a GS-adenine pharmaceutical complex was prepared through solvent evaporation to improve the bioavailability of GS, and a molecular model of a two-component supramolecular pharmacological transport mechanism was established. The structure of GS-adenine was characterized, in addition, interaction patterns between GS and adenine were investigated using density functional theory. The results showed that the solubility of GS-adenine was five times higher than that of GS, and the cumulative release rate of GS-adenine was 86 %. The results of fluorescence spectroscopy and molecular dynamic simulations showed that GS-adenine bound to the Sudlow's site I of HSA mainly through hydrophobic interactions. This study provides a useful reference for synthesizing pharmaceutical complexes to improve solubility and for exploring the mechanism of multiple pharmaceutical components in vivo.

Two titanium(iv)-oxo-clusters: synthesis, structures, characterization and recycling catalytic activity in the oxygenation of sulfides.

Two 5-sulfosalicylic acid (H3ssal) and 1,10-phenanthroline (Phen) substituted titanium-oxo-clusters, [Ti6O8 (Hssal)2(Phen)6(H2O)4]·4OH·21H2O (TOC-1) and [Ti4O4(Hssal)4(Phen)4]·18H2O·4NH3 (TOC-2), have been synthesized and fully characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy, elemental analysis, thermogravimetric analysis and fluorescence analysis. The structure of TOC-1 is a hexanuclear cluster containing a {Ti6(µ2-O)8} core, where all titanium ions can be described in a distorted octahedral geometry with both 1,10-phenanthroline and 5-sulfosalicylate serving as chelating ligands, while TOC-2 consists of a tetranuclear {Ti4(µ2-O)4} skeleton forming an approximate plane quadrilateral where both 5-sulfosalicylate and 1,10-phenanthroline ligands chelate to the titanium atom and the oxygen atom bridges two titanium atoms. Moreover, catalytic activity for the selective oxidation of sulfides, methyl phenyl sulfide (MPS) and phenyl sulfide (PPS), has also been explored. The results showed that TOCs 1 and 2 exhibit excellent catalytic performance in the oxidation of sulfides to sulfoxides with H2O2 as an oxidant. In particular, TOC-1 is an efficient homogeneous catalyst and very interestingly it can be recovered by filtration upon cooling and then reused at least four times without losing activity, which is very rare in the oxygenation of organic sulfides.

[Detection of hepatitis C virus antigen in hemodialysis patients].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the utility of the HCV core antigen ELISA in the detection of HCV infection in hemodialysis patients and to compare with Anti-HCV antibodies 3rd generation ELISA. METHODS: Two hundred fifty hemodialysis patients were included in the study. Anti-HCV antibodies and total HCVcAg was determined by ELISA kits. HCV RNA was determined using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). RESULTS: Forty-three out of 250 (17.2%) patients were positive for anti-HCV antibodies and 18% were positive for HCVcAg. 13/250 (5.2%) were positive for HCVcAg but anti-HCV negative, All 13 were confirmed viremic by in-house nested RT-PCR leading to specificity of 100%. Viral load of (49258 +/- 28682) copies/ml were detected in HCVcAg positive cases was higher in comparison to (23938 +/- 10780) copies/ml in the anti-HCV positive group (P < 0.05). The viral load of 4 negative cases for HCVcAg assay but anti-HCV positive was 306 +/- 161 copies/ml which was significantly lower in comparison to HCVcAg positive group (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Detection of total HCVcAg together with anti-HCV will be useful for patients undergoing hemodialysis who have a longer window period due to immunosuppressed state. HCVcAg was compatible for the HCV RNA in serum and total HCVcAg ELISA is both a cost-effective and a less labor-intensive alternative to PCR, enhancing its clinical utility.

[Application of near-infrared spectra in the determination of water soluble chloride ion in plant samples].

A new method was proposed to extract relevant information from near-infrared (NIR) spectra for multivariate calibration of water soluble chloride ion in complex plant samples. The method is a combination of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and least squares support vector regression (LSSVR). After data compression and background removal in NIR spectra by DWT, the LSSVR approach was used to build NIR spectra regression models on the retained wavelet coefficients. Compared with partial least square regression (PLSR) and LSSVR, the proposed method is superior both in calculation speed and prediction accuracy.