Mol Biol Cell 1992,3(8):913–926.PubMedCrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions DK designed experiments, performed the transposon mutagenesis, mutant screening and growth curves, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. DK contributed to the microscopy, phage assays and swarm assay. PDC designed experiments, contributed to the microscopy, phage assays and swarm assay, analyzed data, and PDC

performed the lacZ expression studies and wrote the manuscript. Y.V.B designed experiments, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background selleckchem Tropical and subtropical forests once covered large areas of Central- and South America. Due to high rates of deforestation up to the 80ies of the last century, and also wildfires, large areas are now grasslands or campos [1], or are used for agricultural purposes (own observations). Species of the coniferous genus Araucaria are important members of tropical and subtropical forests of the southern hemisphere [2]. Among them,

Brazil pine (Araucaria angustifolia [Bertol.] Kuntze) was one of the most important species, economically and ecologically [3, 4], occurring in mountain areas (above 800 m) of Southern BGJ398 solubility dmso Brazil, and dominated the forest vegetation [3]. Due to severe clear cutting and fires, native Araucaria forests today occupy only 1% of the original area occupied [4, 5]. Brazil pine is thus an endangered species [6]. Recent investigations, however, show that under undisturbed conditions forest land starts to invade the grasslands again [7]. Araucariaceae represent very ancient gymnosperms and are also called “living fossils”. According to largely missing literature on this subject, these trees are obviously not very sensitive to fungal pathogens in comparison to conifers of the northern hemisphere. In the latter, root-rot inducing species such as Heterobasidion spec. cause considerable losses in wood production [8, 9]. There is, however, a recent report

on root and crown rot in A. angustifolia, caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi[10], and most recently, Dalmas and Astarita (unpublished observation) detected a fungal pathogen in A. angustifolia Adenosine seedlings, which severely inhibited seedling development. With regard to biocontrol, streptomycetes, which are an important part of bacterial communities of the rhizosphere, have attracted special attention. Streptomycetes produce and release a wide variety of secondary metabolites. Approximately 7,600 out of 43,000 biologically active secondary metabolites, such as antibiotics, have been characterized from streptomycetes [11]. When released to the soil, these may contribute to biocontrol, including the induction of systemic resistance in streptomycetes-colonised plants [12–14].