The filamentous fungus Aspergillus kawachii has traditionally been used for brewing the Japanese distilled spirit shochu. A. kawachii characteristically hyperproduces citric acid and a variety of polysaccharide glycoside hydrolases. Here the genome sequence of A. kawachii IFO 4308 was determined and annotated. Analysis of the sequence may provide insight into the properties of this fungus that make it superior for use in shochu production, leading to the further development of A. kawachii for industrial applications.
        
Title: Effect of three organophosphorous nematicides on non-target nematodes and soil microbial community Wada S, Toyota K Ref: Microbes Environ, 23:331, 2008 : PubMed
The toxicity of three organophosphorous nematicides, imicyafos, fosthiazate and cadusafos, to non-target organisms in soil was evaluated. Imicyafos and fosthiazate had no significant inhibitory effect on the growth of fungal (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lactucae, Rhizoctonia solani and Trichoderma viride) and bacterial (Ralstonia solanacearum and Pseudomonas fluorescens) strains in media at 12.5 to 200 mg L(-1). Cadusafos, however, significantly inhibited the growth of all these strains except R. solanacearum. A pot test was conducted using a soil naturally infested with Pratylenchus penetrans, and treated with imicyafos or fosthiazate, which are less toxic to non-target organisms. The density of P. penetrans decreased to less than 10% of the control level after exposure to imicyafos and fosthiazate at 3 kg active ingredient ha(-1), the conventional dose. No significant effect was observed on the density of free-living nematodes, cellulose decomposition activity, microbial biomass evaluated with the ATP method and number of ammonia oxidizers between the soil treated with imicyafos or fosthiazate and the untreated control soil. Our results revealed that imicyafos and fosthiazate effectively suppressed a plant-parasitic nematode, P. penetrans, but had little impact on free-living nematodes and the soil microbial community.
Several types of imidazolium salt ionic liquids were prepared derived from poly(oxyethylene)alkyl sulfate and used as an additive or coating material for lipase-catalyzed transesterification in an organic solvent. A remarkably increased enantioselectivity was obtained when the salt was added at 3-10 mol % versus substrate in the Burkholderia cepacia lipase (lipase PS-C)-catalyzed transesterification of 1-phenylethanol by using vinyl acetate in diisopropyl ether or a hexane solvent system. In particular, a remarkable acceleration was accomplished by the ionic liquid coating with lipase PS in an iPr(2)O solvent system while maintaining excellent enantioselectivity; it reached approximately 500- to 1000-fold acceleration for some substrates with excellent enantioselectivity. A similar acceleration was also observed for IL 1-coated Candida rugosa lipase. MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry experiments of the ionic-liquid-coated lipase PS suggest that ionic liquid binds with lipase protein.
The first chordates appear in the fossil record at the time of the Cambrian explosion, nearly 550 million years ago. The modern ascidian tadpole represents a plausible approximation to these ancestral chordates. To illuminate the origins of chordate and vertebrates, we generated a draft of the protein-coding portion of the genome of the most studied ascidian, Ciona intestinalis. The Ciona genome contains approximately 16,000 protein-coding genes, similar to the number in other invertebrates, but only half that found in vertebrates. Vertebrate gene families are typically found in simplified form in Ciona, suggesting that ascidians contain the basic ancestral complement of genes involved in cell signaling and development. The ascidian genome has also acquired a number of lineage-specific innovations, including a group of genes engaged in cellulose metabolism that are related to those in bacteria and fungi.