Rare magnetic resonance imaging findings of intracranial solitary fibrous tumor: A case report.

RATIONALE: Solitary fibrous tumor (SFT) is a rare mesenchymal spindle cell tumor. SFT in the central nervous system (CNS) is rare. This case reports rare magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings of intracranial SFT (ISFT). PATIENT CONCERNS: We report a 47-year-old female patient who was found to have weakness in her right limb with walking instability 2 months before the visit. DIAGNOSES: Based on imaging, the provisional diagnosis was meningioma. Postsurgical histopathological diagnosis confirmed World Health Organization (WHO) grade I SFT/hemangiopericytoma (HPC). INTERVENTIONS: The lesion was totally excised. The patient improved remarkably after the operation, without any signs of associated limb movement disorder. OUTCOMES: No local recurrence or metastases were observed in the follow-up 3 months after the surgery. LESSONS: Intracranial SFT is a rare mesenchymal tumor. Due to different tumor components, imaging manifestations are diverse and lack of characteristics, so preoperative diagnosis is challenging. Our case provides a rare ISFT with significantly decreased signal intensity in T2 weighted images (T2WI), which is an important supplement to the rare imaging findings of intracranial SFT.

Iron and zinc micronutrients and soil inoculation of Trichoderma harzianum enhance wheat grain quality and yield.

Malnutrition is mainly caused by iron and zinc micronutrient deficiencies affecting about half of the world's population across the globe. Biofortification of staple crops is the right approach to overcome malnutrition and enhance nutrient contents in the daily food of humans. This study aimed to evaluate the role of foliar application of iron and zinc in Trichoderma harzianum treated soil on various growth characteristics, quality, and yield of wheat varieties. Plants were examined in the absence/presence of T. harzianum, and iron and zinc micronutrients in both optimal and high-stress conditions. Although the symbiotic association of T. harzianum and common wheat is utilized as an effective approach for wheat improvement because of the dynamic growth promoting the ability of the fungus, this association was found tremendously effective in the presence of foliar feeding of micronutrients for the enhancement of various growth parameters and quality of wheat. The utilization of this approach positively increased various growth parameters including spike length, grain mass, biomass, harvest index, and photosynthetic pigments. The beneficial role of T. harzianum in combination with zinc and iron in stimulating plant growth and its positive impact on the intensities of high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GS) alleles make it an interesting approach for application in eco-friendly agricultural systems. Further, this study suggests a possible alternative way that does not merely enhances the wheat yield but also its quality through proper biofortification of iron and zinc to fulfill the daily needs of micronutrients in staple food.

Current Insight into Culture-Dependent and Culture-Independent Methods in Discovering Ascomycetous Taxa.

Culture techniques are vital in both traditional and modern fungal taxonomy. Establishing sexual-asexual links and synanamorphs, extracting DNA and secondary metabolites are mainly based on cultures. However, it is widely accepted that a large number of species are not sporulating in nature while others cannot be cultured. Recent ecological studies based on culture-independent methods revealed these unculturable taxa, i.e., dark taxa. Recent fungal diversity estimation studies suggested that environmental sequencing plays a vital role in discovering missing species. However, Sanger sequencing is still the main approach in determining DNA sequences in culturable species. In this paper, we summarize culture-based and culture-independent methods in the study of ascomycetous taxa. High-throughput sequencing of leaf endophytes, leaf litter fungi and fungi in aquatic environments is important to determine dark taxa. Nevertheless, currently, naming dark taxa is not recognized by the ICN, thus provisional naming of them is essential as suggested by several studies.