Fungi and nematodes are among the most abundant organisms in soil habitats. They provide essential ecosystem services and play crucial roles for maintaining the stability of food-webs and for facilitating nutrient cycling. As two of the very abundant groups of organisms, fungi and nematodes interact with each other in multiple ways. Here in this review, we provide a broad framework of interactions between fungi and nematodes with an emphasis on those that impact crops and agriculture ecosystems. We describe the diversity and evolution of fungi that closely interact with nematodes, including food fungi for nematodes as well as fungi that feed on nematodes. Among the nematophagous fungi, those that produce specialized nematode-trapping devices are especially interesting, and a great deal is known about their diversity, evolution, and molecular mechanisms of interactions with nematodes. Some of the fungi and nematodes are significant pathogens and pests to crops. We summarize the ecological and molecular mechanisms identified so far that impact, either directly or indirectly, the interactions among phytopathogenic fungi, phytopathogenic nematodes, and crop plants. The potential applications of our understanding to controlling phytophagous nematodes and soilborne fungal pathogens in agricultural fields are discussed.
We sought to determine whether patients who had therapy failure with increasingly drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis had primary or acquired drug resistance, by genotyping the initial and subsequent drug-resistant clinical isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis collected from patients by the Shanghai Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the course of a 5-year period. The vast majority of patients (27/32) had primary drug resistance, indicating transmission of a drug-resistant strain of M. tuberculosis. Only 16% (5/32) had acquired drug resistance because of a poor treatment regimen or nonadherence to an adequate regimen. Our findings highlight the urgency of increasing efforts to interrupt the transmission of drug-resistant tuberculosis in communities and facilities in Shanghai, China.
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