Information about the fungal composition of bee bread, and the fermentation processes to which the fungi contribute significantly, is rather scarce or fragmentary. In this study, we performed an NGS-based metagenomics snapshot picture study of the fungal composition of bee bread in four locations in Bulgaria during the most active honeybee foraging period at the end of June 2020. The sampling locations were chosen to differ significantly in climatic conditions, landscape, and anthropogenic pressure, and the Illumina 2 × 250 paired-end reads platform was used for amplicon metagenomics study of the ITS2 region. We found that some of the already reported canonical beneficial core fungal species were present within the studied samples. However, some fungal genera such as Monilinia, Sclerotinia, Golovinomyces, Toxicocladosporium, Pseudopithomyces, Podosphaera and Septoriella were reported for the first time among the dominant genera for a honeybee related product. Anthropogenic pressure negatively influences the fungal composition of the bee bread in two different ways—urban/industrial pressure affects the presence of pathogenic species, while agricultural pressure is reflected in a decrease of the ratio of the beneficial fungi.

Sphaerococcum mutant forms obtained after EMS treatment in T.aestivum (AABBDD) and6x-Triticale (AABBRR/2D) were studied at genetical, cytogenetical and molecular level. The initial genetic grouping was based on the existence of two types of sphaerococcum mutation; stable and unstable. Transposable elements like AciDs from wheat and Triticale are described in both Sphaerococcum mutant forms. Cytogeneticaly detectable chromosomal rearrangements including the main briges were established only in unstable mutant forms. Southern hybridization analysis of the unstable mutant forms, 49L sph and 49L aest indicated the presence of AciDs-/ike transposable elements in their genomes. The stable mutant form MT47 sph possesses Ds-like transposable element. Ac was present in the genome of mutant forms of 613, 6512, 491202/S1, S.r2x 613 and the control form ofT. aestivum (S.ranozreika 2). These observations provide a basis for the isolation and molecular characterization of the sphaerococcum locus in wheat and Triticale.

ABSTRACT

In this study, Enterococcus faecalis H1041 which was isolated from the traditional Bulgarian green cheese was characterized in depth by a whole-genome sequencing performed on the Illumina HiSeq platform using 2 x 150 bases paired-end reads mode. The bioinformatic analysis performed only with free online tools revealed that the strain resembles other cheese-born E. faecalis strains by its antibiotics’ resistances and virulence genotype, thus its presence within the green cheese should not be considered as a health risk. Only two antibiotic resistance genetic determinants were found, but they both carry mutations, and probably are not functional. Furthermore, 18 virulence factor genetic determinants were found, but only 6 of them possessed 100% identities with the canonical sequences, and being more or less intrinsic for the Enterococcus genus. None of them were found on contigs that contain sequences with known plasmid origin of replication. Enterolysin A gene was also detected which most probably plays role in ripening process of the Bulgarian green cheese.

No abstract