No abstract

The discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has made an invaluable contribution to the field of regenerative medicine, paving way for identifying the true potential of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Since the controversy around ethicality of ESCs continue to be debated, iPSCs have been used to circumvent the process around destruction of the human embryo. The use of iPSCs have transformed biological research, wherein increasing number of studies are documenting nuclear reprogramming strategies to make them beneficial models for drug screening as well as disease modelling. The flexibility around the use of iPSCs include compatibility to non-invasive harvesting, and ability to source from patients with rare diseases. iPSCs have been widely used in cardiac disease modelling, studying inherited arrhythmias, neural disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, liver disease, and spinal cord injury. Extensive research around identifying factors that are involved in maintaining the identity of ESCs during induction of pluripotency in somatic cells is undertaken. The focus of the current review is to detail all the clinical translation research around iPSCs and the strength of its ever-growing potential in the clinical space.

Recent technological advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have dramatically reduced the cost of DNA sequencing, allowing species with large and complex genomes to be sequenced. Although bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the world’s most important food crops, efficient exploitation of molecular marker-assisted breeding approaches has lagged behind that achieved in other crop species, due to its large polyploid genome. However, an international public–private effort spanning 9 years reported over 65% draft genome of bread wheat in 2014, and finally, after more than a decade culminated in the release of a gold-standard, fully annotated reference wheat-genome assembly in 2018. Shortly thereafter, in 2020, the genome of assemblies of additional 15 global wheat accessions was released. As a result, wheat has now entered into the pan-genomic era, where basic resources can be efficiently exploited. Wheat genotyping with a few hundred markers has been replaced by genotyping arrays, capable of characterizing hundreds of wheat lines, using thousands of markers, providing fast, relatively inexpensive, and reliable data for exploitation in wheat breeding. These advances have opened up new opportunities for marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection (GS) in wheat. Herein, we review the advances and perspectives in wheat genetics and genomics, with a focus on key traits, including grain yield, yield-related traits, end-use quality, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. We also focus on reported candidate genes cloned and linked to traits of interest. Furthermore, we report on the improvement in the aforementioned quantitative traits, through the use of (i) clustered regularly interspaced short-palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9)-mediated gene-editing and (ii) positional cloning methods, and of genomic selection. Finally, we examine the utilization of genomics for the next-generation wheat breeding, providing a practical example of using in silico bioinformatics tools that are based on the wheat reference-genome sequence.

Fusarium graminearum Schwabe causes Fusarium head blight (FHB), a devastating disease that leads to extensive yield and quality loss of wheat and other cereal crops. Twelve isolates of F. graminearum were collected from naturally infected spikes of wheat from Assiut Egypt. These isolates were compared using SRAP. The results indicated distinct genetic groups exist within F. graminearum, and demonstrated that these groups have different biological properties, especially with respect to their pathogenicity on wheat. There were biologically significant differences between the groups; with group (B) isolates being more aggressive towards wheat than groups (A) and (C). Furthermore, Trichoderma harzianum (Rifai) and Bacillus subtilis (Ehrenberg) which isolated from wheat kernels were screened for antagonistic activity against F. graminearum. They significantly reduced the growth of F. graminearum colonies in culture. In order to gain insight into biological control effect in situ, highly antagonistic isolates of T. harzianum and B. subtilis were selected, based on their in vitro effectiveness, for greenhouse test. It was revealed that T. harzianum and B. subtilis significantly reduced FHB severity. The obtained results indicated that T. harzianum and B. subtilis are very effective biocontrol agents that offer potential benefit in FHB and should be harnessed for further biocontrol applications. The accurate analysis of genetic variation and studies of population structures have significant implications for understanding the genetic traits and disease control programs in wheat. This is the first known report of the distribution and genetic variation of F. graminearum on wheat spikes in Assiut Egypt.