Neonicotinoid pesticides were first introduced in the mid-1990s, and since then, their use has grown rapidly. They are now the most widely used class of insecticides in the world, with the majority of applications coming from seed dressings. Neonicotinoids are water-soluble, and so can be taken up by a developing plant and can be found inside vascular tissues and foliage, providing protection against herbivorous insects. However, only approximately 5% of the neonicotinoid active ingredient is taken up by crop plants and most instead disperses into the wider environment. Since the mid-2000s, several studies raised concerns that neonicotinoids may be having a negative effect on non-target organisms, in particular on honeybees and bumblebees. In response to these studies, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was commissioned to produce risk assessments for the use of clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam and their impact on bees. These risk assessments concluded that the use of these compounds on certain flowering crops poses a high risk to bees. On the basis of these findings, the European Union adopted a partial ban on these substances in May 2013. The purpose of the present paper is to collate and summarise scientific evidence published since 2013 that investigates the impact of neonicotinoids on non-target organisms. Whilst much of the recent work has focused on the impact of neonicotinoids on bees, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that persistent, low levels of neonicotinoids can have negative impacts on a wide range of free-living organisms.

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Alternaria is a ubiquitous fungal genus that includes saprobic, endophytic and pathogenic species associated with a wide variety of substrates. In recent years, DNA-based studies revealed multiple non-monophyletic genera within the Alternaria complex, and Alternaria species clades that do not always correlate to species-groups based on morphological characteristics. The Alternaria complex currently comprises nine genera and eight Alternaria sections. The aim of this study was to delineate phylogenetic lineages within Alternaria and allied genera based on nucleotide sequence data of parts of the 18S nrDNA, 28S nrDNA, ITS, GAPDH, RPB2 and TEF1-alpha gene regions. Our data reveal a Pleospora/Stemphylium clade sister to Embellisia annulata, and a well-supported Alternaria clade. The Alternaria clade contains 24 internal clades and six monotypic lineages, the assemblage of which we recognise as Alternaria. This puts the genera Allewia, Brachycladium, Chalastospora, Chmelia, Crivellia, Embellisia, Lewia, Nimbya, Sinomyces, Teretispora, Ulocladium, Undifilum and Ybotromyces in synonymy with Alternaria. In this study, we treat the 24 internal clades in the Alternaria complex as sections, which is a continuation of a recent proposal for the taxonomic treatment of lineages in Alternaria. Embellisia annulata is synonymised with Dendryphiella salina, and together with Dendryphiella arenariae, are placed in the new genus Paradendryphiella. The sexual genera Clathrospora and Comoclathris, which were previously associated with Alternaria, cluster within the Pleosporaceae, outside Alternaria s. str., whereas Alternariaster, a genus formerly seen as part of Alternaria, clusters within the Leptosphaeriaceae. Paradendryphiella is newly described, the generic circumscription of Alternaria is emended, and 32 new combinations and 10 new names are proposed. A further 10 names are resurrected, while descriptions are provided for 16 new Alternaria sections. Taxonomic novelties New combinations - Alternaria abundans (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria alternariae (Cooke) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria atra (Preuss) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria bornmuelleri (Magnus) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria botrytis (Preuss) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria caespitosa (de Hoog & C. Rubio) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria cantlous (Yong Wang bis & X.G. Zhang) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria caricis (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria cinerea (Baucom & Creamer) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria didymospora (Munt.-Cvetk.) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria fulva (Baucom & Creamer) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria hyacinthi (de Hoog & P.J. Mull. bis) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria indefessa (E.G. Simmons) Woudenberg & Crous, Alternaria leptinellae (E.G. Simmons & C.F. Hill) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria lolii (E.G. Simmons & C.F. Hill) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria multiformis (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria obclavata (Crous & U. Braun) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria obovoidea (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria oudemansii (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria oxytropis (Q. Wang, Nagao & Kakish.) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria penicillata (Corda) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria planifunda (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria proteae (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria scirpinfestans (E.G. Simmons & D.A. Johnson) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria scirpivora (E.G. Simmons & D.A. Johnson) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria septospora (Preuss) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria slovaca (Svob.-Pol., L. Chmel & Bojan.) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria subcucurbitae (Yong Wang bis & X.G. Zhang) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria tellustris (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria tumida (E.G. Simmons) Woudenb. & Crous, Paradendryphiella salina (G.K. Sutherl.) Woudenb. & Crous, Paradendryphiella arenariae (Nicot) Woudenb. & Crous. New names - Alternaria aspera Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria botryospora Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria brassicae-pekinensis Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria breviramosa Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria chlamydosporigena Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria concatenata Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria embellisia Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria heterospora Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria papavericola Woudenb. & Crous, Alternaria terricola Woudenb. & Crous. Resurrected names - Alternaria cetera E.G. Simmons, Alternaria chartarum Preuss, Alternaria consortialis (Thüm.) J.W. Groves & S. Hughes, Alternaria cucurbitae Letendre & Roum., Alternaria dennisii M.B. Ellis, Alternaria eureka E.G. Simmons, Alternaria gomphrenae Togashi, Alternaria malorum (Ruehle) U. Braun, Crous & Dugan, Alternaria phragmospora Emden, Alternaria scirpicola (Fuckel) Sivan. New sections, all in Alternaria - sect. Chalastospora Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Cheiranthus Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Crivellia Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Dianthicola Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Embellisia Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Embellisioides Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Eureka Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Infectoriae Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Japonicae Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Nimbya Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Phragmosporae Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Pseudoulocladium Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Teretispora Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Ulocladioides Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Ulocladium Woudenb. & Crous, sect. Undifilum Woudenb. & Crous. New genus - Paradendryphiella Woudenb. & Crous.

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Background Although it is agreed that a major polyploidy event, gamma, occurred within the eudicots, the phylogenetic placement of the event remains unclear. Results To determine when this polyploidization occurred relative to speciation events in angiosperm history, we employed a phylogenomic approach to investigate the timing of gene set duplications located on syntenic gamma blocks. We populated 769 putative gene families with large sets of homologs obtained from public transcriptomes of basal angiosperms, magnoliids, asterids, and more than 91.8 gigabases of new next-generation transcriptome sequences of non-grass monocots and basal eudicots. The overwhelming majority (95%) of well-resolved gamma duplications was placed before the separation of rosids and asterids and after the split of monocots and eudicots, providing strong evidence that the gamma polyploidy event occurred early in eudicot evolution. Further, the majority of gene duplications was placed after the divergence of the Ranunculales and core eudicots, indicating that the gamma appears to be restricted to core eudicots. Molecular dating estimates indicate that the duplication events were intensely concentrated around 117 million years ago. Conclusions The rapid radiation of core eudicot lineages that gave rise to nearly 75% of angiosperm species appears to have occurred coincidentally or shortly following the gamma triplication event. Reconciliation of gene trees with a species phylogeny can elucidate the timing of major events in genome evolution, even when genome sequences are only available for a subset of species represented in the gene trees. Comprehensive transcriptome datasets are valuable complements to genome sequences for high-resolution phylogenomic analysis.

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Almost 25 centuries ago, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, proclaimed "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." Exploring the association between diet and health continues today. For example, we now know that as many as 35% of all cancers can be prevented by dietary changes. Carcinogenesis is a multistep process involving the transformation, survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis of the tumor and may take up to 30 years. The pathways associated with this process have been linked to chronic inflammation, a major mediator of tumor progression. The human body consists of about 13 trillion cells, almost all of which are turned over within 100 days, indicating that 70,000 cells undergo apoptosis every minute. Thus, apoptosis/cell death is a normal physiological process, and it is rare that a lack of apoptosis kills the patient. Almost 90% of all deaths due to cancer are linked to metastasis of the tumor. How our diet can prevent cancer is the focus of this review. Specifically, we will discuss how nutraceuticals, such as allicin, apigenin, berberine, butein, caffeic acid, capsaicin, catechin gallate, celastrol, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, fisetin, flavopiridol, gambogic acid, genistein, plumbagin, quercetin, resveratrol, sanguinarine, silibinin, sulforaphane, taxol, gamma-tocotrienol, and zerumbone, derived from spices, legumes, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, can modulate inflammatory pathways and thus affect the survival, proliferation, invasion, angiogenesis, and metastasis of the tumor. Various cell signaling pathways that are modulated by these agents will also be discussed.

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Background and aims After the initial boom in the application of flow cytometry in plant sciences in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was accompanied by development of many nuclear isolation buffers, only a few efforts were made to develop new buffer formulas. In this work, recent data on the performance of nuclear isolation buffers are utilized in order to develop new buffers, general purpose buffer (GPB) and woody plant buffer (WPB), for plant DNA flow cytometry. Methods GPB and WPB were used to prepare samples for flow cytometric analysis of nuclear DNA content in a set of 37 plant species that included herbaceous and woody taxa with leaf tissues differing in structure and chemical composition. The following parameters of isolated nuclei were assessed: forward and side light scatter, propidium iodide fluorescence, coefficient of variation of DNA peaks, quantity of debris background, and the number of particles released from sample tissue. The nuclear genome size of 30 selected species was also estimated using the buffer that performed better for a given species. Key results In unproblematic species, the use of both buffers resulted in high quality samples. The analysis of samples obtained with GPB usually resulted in histograms of DNA content with higher or similar resolution than those prepared with the WPB. In more recalcitrant tissues, such as those from woody plants, WPB performed better and GPB failed to provide acceptable results in some cases. Improved resolution of DNA content histograms in comparison with previously published buffers was achieved in most of the species analysed. Conclusions WPB is a reliable buffer which is also suitable for the analysis of problematic tissues/species. Although GPB failed with some plant species, it provided high-quality DNA histograms in species from which nuclear suspensions are easy to prepare. The results indicate that even with a broad range of species, either GPB or WPB is suitable for preparation of high-quality suspensions of intact nuclei suitable for DNA flow cytometry.

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