FABI News
25 Apr 2019
FABIans attend the Black Women in Science inaugural gala dinner
25 Apr 2019
The Mondi Chair in Forest Pathology: Celebration of a 25 year investment
23 Apr 2019
Fourth FABI Ph.D. for 2019
18 Apr 2019
FABIans celebrate Zander Human’s prestige seminar
17 Apr 2019
FABI PhD student wins prize at Joint Genome Institute User Meeting in San Francisco
Research Features
The Polyphagous Shothole Borer (PHSB) was discovered for the first time in South Africa by the FABI team in 2017. Since then, this beetle and its fungus have been found killing trees in all provinces in South Africa, except Mpumalanga. It attacks agricultural and forestry crops, street and garden trees, as well as several native tree species.
With the increased availability in genome data, inferences regarding evolutionary relationships among taxa can now be performed on a genome-wide scale. But it is widely accepted that not all parts of such massive datasets support the same evolutionary hypothesis. Because of this, a group of researchers at FABI recently investigated the effect of this.
Comparative genomics is shaping our notion of what fungal species are. Based on current data, these unique evolutionary units are separated from one another by boundaries that are porous under certain conditions. This affects our expectations regarding their population biology and evolution, and our strategies for recognizing and controlling them.
Approaches for characterizing metabolic potential from genomic sequences have previously been predicted to be useful in the description of bacterial taxa. Dr Marike Palmer, has recently employed these approaches for identifying biological processes contributing to the divergence of bacteria with a variety of lifestyles.
Plastids play an integral role in wood formation, and yet they are routinely ignored in the study of xylogenesis in forest trees. Desre Pinard and Dr Eshchar Mizrachi have published a review highlighting the unique biology of plastids in wood, suggesting that a new type of plastid, the xylopast, exists.
Two research papers from FABI were selected as cover stories in two consecutive issues of the international journal, Plant Pathology. The journal is published by Wiley for the British Society of Plant Pathology.
A PhD student in FABI, Runlei Chang, has discovered and described 19 new fungal species from China as part of the research for his thesis. These fungi are all associated with conifer-infesting bark beetles and their mites and belong to well-known genera such as Ophiostoma and Leptographium.
The use of genome data to characterize species and elucidate relationships, particularly between problematic taxa, has become routine practice in bacteria. Recently, researchers from FABI joined in an international effort to describe two novel genera and characterize these within the larger context of the important bacterial group Burkholderia.
Workshops & Symposia
13-15 May 2019
New Publications
Palmer M, Venter SN, McTaggart AR, Coetzee MPA, Van Wyk S, Avontuur JR, Beukes CW, Fourie G, Santana QC, Van der Nest MA, Blom J, Steenkamp ET. (2019) The synergistic effect of concatenation in phylogenomics: the case in Pantoea. PeerJ
10.7717/peerj.6698 
Juan Vorster, Chris Cullis, Karl Kunert. (2019) Plant Vacuolar Processing Enzymes. Frontiers in Plant Science :00497.
10.3389/fpls.2019.00479
Wingfield BD, Millar B. (2019) How the open access model hurts academics in poorer countries. The Conversation
https://bit.ly/2Gn3skG
Fell S, De Beer ZW. (2019) The impact of the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer on Pecan trees in South Africa. SA Pecan 82:11-13.
https://bit.ly/2U2Nyj6
Bradshaw RE, Sim AD, Chettri P, Dupont P-Y, Guo Y, Hunziker L, McDougal RL, van der Nest A, Fourie A, Wheeler D, Cox MP, Barnes I. (2019) Global population genomics of the forest pathogen Dothistroma septosporum reveal chromosome duplications in high dothistromin-producing strains. Molecular Plant Pathology
10.1111/mpp.12791