Digital Commons Network^™

The Parastagonospora Nodorum Necrotrophic Effector Sntox5 Targets The Wheat Gene Snn5 And Facilitates Entry Into The Leaf Mesophyll, Gayan K. Kariyawasam, Jonathan K. Richards, Nathan A. Wyatt, Katherine L.D. Running, Steven S. Xu, Zhaohui Liu, Pawel Borowicz, Justin D. Faris, Timothy L. Friesen

Faculty Publications

Parastagonospora nodorum is an economically important necrotrophic fungal pathogen of wheat. Parastagonospora nodorum secretes necrotrophic effectors that target wheat susceptibility genes to induce programmed cell death (PCD). In this study, we cloned and functionally validated SnTox5 and characterized its role in pathogenesis. We used whole genome sequencing, genome-wide association study (GWAS) mapping, CRISPR-Cas9-based gene disruption, gain-of-function transformation, quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis, haplotype and isoform analysis, protein modeling, quantitative PCR, and laser confocal microscopy to validate SnTox5 and functionally characterize SnTox5. SnTox5 is a mature 16.26 kDa protein with high structural similarity to SnTox3. Wild-type and mutant P. nodorum strains …

A New Detection Of The Invasive Mexican Rice Borer (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) From Georgia In The United States Based On Morphological And Molecular Data, Ilgoo Kang, Blake Wilson, Blake Carter, Rodrigo Diaz

Faculty Publications

The Mexican rice borer, Eoreuma loftini (Dyar), is an invasive herbivore that attacks many gramineous host plants. The species is an economic pest of several grass crops in North America including sugarcane (Saccharum spp.), rice (Oryza sativa), corn (Zea mays), and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). The species was first detected in the United States in 1980 and has since expanded its range eastward along the Gulf Coast reaching Louisiana in 2008. A disjointed introduction was detected in Florida in 2012, though range expansion of this population within the state has been limited. Most recently, a separate introduction was detected along the …

Context-Dependent Viral Transgenerational Immune Priming In Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae), Sarah Lang, Michael Simone-Finstrom, Kristen Healy

Faculty Publications

Transgenerational immune priming is the process of increased resistance to infection in offspring due to parental pathogen exposure. Honey bees (Apis mellifera L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae)) are hosts to multiple pathogens, and this complex immune function could help protect against overwhelming infection. Honey bees have demonstrated transgenerational immune priming for the bacterial pathogen Paenibacillus larvae; however, evidence for viral transgenerational immune priming is lacking across insects in general. Here we test for the presence of transgenerational immune priming in honey bees with Deformed wing virus (DWV) by injecting pupae from DWV-exposed queens and measuring virus titer and immune gene expression. Our …

Effects Of Testing And Disclosing Ancestry-Specific Genetic Risk For Kidney Failure On Patients And Health Care Professionals: A Randomized Clinical Trial, Girish N. Nadkarni, Kezhen Fei, Michelle A. Ramos, Diane Hauser, Emilia Bagiella, Stephen B. Ellis, Saskia Sanderson, Stuart A. Scott, Tatiana Sabin, Ebony Madden, Richard Cooper, Martin Pollak, Neil Calman, Erwin P. Bottinger, Carol R. Horowitz

Faculty Publications

Importance: Risk variants in the apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1 [OMIM 603743]) gene on chromosome 22 are common in individuals of West African ancestry and confer increased risk of kidney failure for people with African ancestry and hypertension. Whether disclosing APOL1 genetic testing results to patients of African ancestry and their clinicians affects blood pressure, kidney disease screening, or patient behaviors is unknown. Objective: To determine the effects of testing and disclosing APOL1 genetic results to patients of African ancestry with hypertension and their clinicians. Design, Setting, and Participants: This pragmatic randomized clinical trial randomly assigned 2050 adults of African ancestry with …

The Band Of American Ladies : Children’S Librarians And The Creation Of Children’S Literature In The Long 19th Century, Suzanne Stauffer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Alternative Nesting Strategies Of Polistine Wasps In A Subtropical Locale, Scott Nacko, Mark A. Hall, Gregg Henderson

Faculty Publications

Phylogenetic studies suggest that historically all paper wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae) in North America have tropical origins, but some species have adapted to survive temperate conditions. Subtropical climates, which are intermediate between temperate and tropical, allow a unique opportu-nity to study ancestral traits which can be retained or lost within populations, and ultimately elucidate the process of social wasp evolution. We investigated the phenology of paper wasps at study sites in subtropical Baton Rouge, USA, through nest searching and monitoring of nest parameters throughout the warm season (March–October). Across the year, two periods of nest initiation occurred: from March–May (early season …

Holistic Management Of Pollinators And Pests: Integrating Semiochemicals With On-Farm Pesticides, Olabimpe O. Okosun, Gadi V.P. Reddy

Faculty Publications

Insect pollinators and insect herbivores affect plant reproduction and fitness. Floral displays are used to attract and manipulate pollinators' behavior to support plant sexual reproduction while rewarding the visitors with access to nectar and pollen. The plant-pollinator interactions use various semiochemicals as important communication channels for successful species interaction networks. Floral display and scents can also attract insect herbivores (in which case they act as kairomones). Consequently, semiochemical-color-based traps used for monitoring pest insects in crop fields often accidentally capture pollinators, and these interactions simultaneously affect pest monitoring, pollinator assemblages, and crop production in agroecosystems. An integrated interdisciplinary approach that …

On The Need For New Measures Of Phylogenomic Support, Robert C. Thomson, Jeremy M. Brown

Faculty Publications

The scale of data sets used to infer phylogenies has grown dramatically in the last decades, providing researchers with an enormous amount of information with which to draw inferences about evolutionary history. However, standard approaches to assessing confidence in those inferences (e.g., nonparametric bootstrap proportions [BP] and Bayesian posterior probabilities [PPs]) are still deeply influenced by statistical procedures and frameworks that were developed when information was much more limited. These approaches largely quantify uncertainty caused by limited amounts of data, which is often vanishingly small with modern, genome-scale sequence data sets. As a consequence, today's phylogenomic studies routinely report near-complete …

Influence Of Market Type And Time Of Purchase On Bacterial Counts And Salmonella And Listeria Prevalence In Whole Chickens In Vietnam, April K. Englishbey, Anuraj T. Sukumaran, Phuong T. T. Vu, Yen T. Thuc, Man V. V. Le, Dzung H. Nguyen, Paul R. Broadway, Lacey M. Guillen, Mindy M. Brashears, Janet R. Donaldson, M. Wes Schilling, Chelsie B. Dahlgren, Brian J. Rude, Mark A. Crenshaw, Thu T. N. Dinh

Faculty Publications

The objective of the current study was to determine the influence of market type and sampling time on Salmonella and Listeria prevalence and bacterial counts of 180 whole chicken carcasses collected from 6 supermarkets (SM), 6 indoor markets (IM), and 6 open markets (OM) in Vietnam, at opening (T0) and 4 h after the opening (T4). Salmonella and Listeria prevalence was at least 25.6% and 42.7%, respectively. Whole birds in IM had greater Salmonella prevalence than birds from both SM and OM by 28.4% and 23.0% (P = 0.006 and 0.022, respectively). Listeria prevalence was lower in whole chickens from …

An Open Hardware 3-D Printed Device For Measuring Tensile Properties Of Thermoplastic Filament Polymers At Cryogenic Temperatures, Yue Liu, Ju Dong, Terrence R. Tiersch, Qinglin Wu, William T. Monroe

Faculty Publications

With the emerging recognition of open scientific hardware, rapid prototyping technology such as three-dimensional (3-D) printing is becoming widely available for fields such as cryobiology, and cryopreservation, where material selection for instruments and hardware has traditionally been problematic due to extreme low temperatures. A better understanding of the mechanical properties of 3-D printing thermoplastics at cryogenic temperatures is essential to material selection, part design, and printing optimization. The goal of the present study was to explore the feasibility of development for a 3-D printed device (‘CryoTensileDevice’) to hold a test specimen in liquid nitrogen and be mounted in standard mechanical …

Habitat Segregation Patterns Of Container Breeding Mosquitos: The Role Of Urban Heat Islands, Vegetation Cover, And Income Disparity In Cemeteries Of New Orleans, Rebeca De Jesús Crespo, Rachel Elba Rogers

Faculty Publications

Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus are important pathogen-carrying vectors that broadly exhibit similar habitat suitability, but that differ at fine spatial scales in terms of competitive advantage and tolerance to urban driven environmental parameters. This study evaluated how spatial and temporal patterns drive the assemblages of these competing species in cemeteries of New Orleans, LA, applying indicators of climatic variability, vegetation, and heat that may drive habitat selection at multiple scales. We found that Ae. aegypti was well predicted by urban heat islands (UHI) at the cemetery scale and by canopy cover directly above the cemetery vase. As predicted, UHI …

Molecular Data From The Holotype Of The Enigmatic Bornean Black Shrew, Suncus Ater Medway, 1965 (Soricidae, Crocidurinae), Place It In The Genus Palawanosorex, Jonathan A. Nations, Thomas C. Giarla, Muhd Amsyari Morni, Julius William Dee, Mark T. Swanson, Anna E. Hiller, Faisal Ali Anwarali Khan, Jacob A. Esselstyn

Faculty Publications

Although Borneo has received more attention from biologists than most other islands in the Malay Ar-chipelago, many questions regarding the systematic relationships of Bornean mammals remain. Using next-generation sequencing technology, we obtained mitochondrial DNA sequences from the holotype of Suncus ater, the only known specimen of this shrew. Several shrews collected recently in Sarawak are closely aligned, both morphologically and mitochondrially, with the holotype of S. ater. Phylogenetic analyses of mitochondrial sequences indicate that the S. ater holotype and new Sarawak specimens do not belong to the genus Suncus, but instead are most closely related to Palawanosorex muscorum. Until now …

No Guts About It: Captivity, But Not Neophobia Phenotype, Influences The Cloacal Microbiome Of House Sparrows (Passer Domesticus), T. R. Kelly, A. E. Vinson, G. M. King, C. R. Lattin

Faculty Publications

Behavioral traits such as anxiety and depression have been linked to diversity of the gut microbiome in humans, domesticated animals, and lab-bred model species, but the extent to which this link exists in wild animals, and thus its eco- logical relevance, is poorly understood. We examined the relationship between a behavioral trait (neophobia) and the cloacal microbiome in wild house sparrows ( Passer domesticus, n = 22) to determine whether gut microbial diversity is related to per- sonality in a wild animal. We swabbed the cloaca immediately upon capture, assessed neophobia phenotypes in the lab, and then swabbed the cloaca …

Morphology Of Migration: Associations Between Wing Shape, Bill Morphology And Migration In Kingbirds (Tyrannus), Maggie P. Macpherson, Alex E. Jahn, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

Morphology is closely linked to locomotion and diet in animals. In animals that undertake long-distance migrations, limb morphology is under selection to maximize mobility and minimize energy expenditure. Migratory behaviours also interact with diet, such that migratory animals tend to be dietary generalists, whereas sedentary taxa tend to be dietary specialists. Despite a hypothesized link between migration status and morphology, phylogenetic comparative studies have yielded conflicting findings. We tested for evolutionary associations between migratory status and limb and bill morphology across kingbirds, a pan-American genus of birds with migratory, partially migratory and sedentary taxa. Migratory kingbirds had longer wings, in …

A Low-Cost Greenhouse-Based High-Throughput Phenotyping Platform For Genetic Studies: A Case Study In Maize Under Inoculation With Plant Growth-Promoting Bacteria, Rafael Massahiro Yassue, Giovanni Galli, Ronaldo Borsato, Hao Cheng, Gota Morota, Roberto Fritsche-Neto

Faculty Publications

Greenhouse-based high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) presents a useful approach for studying novel plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB). Despite the potential of this approach to leverage genetic variability for breeding new maize (Zea Mays L.) cultivars exhibiting highly stable symbiosis with PGPB, greenhouse-based HTP platforms are not yet widely used because they are highly expensive; hence, it is challenging to perform HTP studies under a limited budget. In this study, we built a low-cost greenhouse-based HTP platform to collect growth-related image-derived phenotypes. We assessed 360 inbred maize lines with or without PGPB inoculation under nitrogen-limited conditions. Plant height, canopy coverage, and canopy volume …

Genome And Environment Based Prediction Models And Methods Of Complex Traits Incorporating Genotype × Environment Interaction, José Crossa, Osval Antonio Montesinos-López, Paulino Pérez-Rodríguez, Germano Costa-Neto, Roberto Fritsche-Neto, Rodomiro Ortiz, Johannes W.R. Martini, Morten Lillemo, Abelardo Montesinos-López, Diego Jarquin, Flavio Breseghello, Jaime Cuevas, Renaud Rincent

Faculty Publications

Genomic-enabled prediction models are of paramount importance for the successful implementation of genomic selection (GS) based on breeding values. As opposed to animal breeding, plant breeding includes extensive multienvironment and multiyear field trial data. Hence, genomic-enabled prediction models should include genotype × environment (G × E) interaction, which most of the time increases the prediction performance when the response of lines are different from environment to environment. In this chapter, we describe a historical timeline since 2012 related to advances of the GS models that take into account G × E interaction. We describe theoretical and practical aspects of those …

Judges And Mass Incarceration, Carissa Byrne Hessick

Faculty Publications

This Article argues that judges—long overlooked in contemporary explanations of mass incarceration—have played a central role both through affirmative decisions that increased punishment and through failures to act as a check on prosecutorial power. It traces how judicial choices such as imposing the trial penalty, deferring to sentencing guidelines, allowing coercive plea bargaining, expanding pretrial detention, and adopting narrow or delayed statutory interpretations have structurally reshaped the criminal justice system to favor conviction and incarceration. The Article then proposes practical steps trial judges could implement immediately to reverse these trends, including reducing reliance on pretrial detention, eliminating the trial penalty, …

Policing The Polity, Eisha Jain

Faculty Publications

The era of Chinese Exclusion left a legacy of race-based deportation. Yet it also had an impact that reached well beyond removal. In a seminal decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that required people of “Chinese descent” living in the United States to display a certificate of residence on demand or risk arrest, detention, and possible deportation. Immigration control provided the stated rationale for singling out a particular group of U.S. residents and subjecting them to race-based domestic policing. By treating these policing practices as part and parcel of the process of deportation, the Court obscured the full …

Does U.S. Federal Employment Law Now Cover Caste Discrimination Based On Untouchability?: If All Else Fails, There Is The Possible Application Of Bostock V. Clayton County, Kevin Brown, Lalit Khandare, Annapurna Waughray, Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, Theodore M. Shaw

Faculty Publications

This article discusses the issue of whether a victim of caste discrimination based on untouchability can assert a claim of intentional employment discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981. This article contends that there are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is a form of religious discrimination under Title VII. The question of whether caste discrimination is a form of race or national origin discrimination under Title VII or Section 1981 depends upon how the courts apply these definitions to caste discrimination based on untouchability. There are legitimate arguments that this form of discrimination is recognized within the concept …

Automated Video Interviewing As The New Phrenology, Ifeoma Ajunwa

Faculty Publications

This Article deploys the new business practice of automated video interviewing as a case study to illuminate the limitations of traditional employment antidiscrimination laws. Employment antidiscrimination laws are inadequate to address the unlawful discrimination attributable to emerging workplace technologies which gatekeep employment opportunities. The Article maintains that the practice of automated video interviewing is based on shaky or unproven social scientific principles that disproportionately impact racial minorities. In this way, the practice of automated video interviewing is analogous to the pseudoscience of phrenology, which enabled societal and economic exclusion through the legitimization of eugenicist and racist attitudes. After parsing the …

Nonmarriage And Choice In South Africa And The United States, Holning Lau, Suzanne A. Kim

Faculty Publications

In this Article, we examine three insights about free choice that emerge from studying the development of South Africa’s law of nonmarriage. First, South African jurisprudence advances understandings of nonmarriage as a valid choice. Unlike U.S. jurisprudence, which has been accused of overprivileging marriage and demeaning nonmarriage, South African jurisprudence draws attention to people’s legitimate reasons for choosing not to marry and the dignity interests attached to that choice. South African law helps to broaden the imagination of what is possible when nonmarriage is respected as a valid choice.

Second, South African jurisprudence illuminates the fact that the choice whether …

Social Justice As Desistance: Rethinking Approaches To Gender Violence, Deborah M. Weissman

Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article describes most domestic violence intervention programs (DVIPs) as they currently function with regard to gender violence. It critiques the structure of these programs, their close partnership with criminal legal system actors, perceived deficiencies, and it identifies missed opportunities to provide meaningful intervention strategies with those who have harmed. It demonstrates the ways that laws, regulations, and policies governing DVIPs constrain most programs from moving beyond established practices informed by punitive approaches to address the structural conditions that situate gender violence within a political economic framework.

Part II begins with a brief overview of the research …

A Taxonomy Of Professional Identity Formation, Harmony Decosimo

Faculty Publications

Following the ABA’s mandate requiring law schools provide students with opportunities for “professional identity formation,” this article seeks to clarify and loosely taxonomize the field of professional identity formation as it is being advanced by scholars and employed in U.S. law schools. By organizing this varied and somewhat muddled field into three dominant types or approaches and examining the primary and sometimes hidden goals of each, this article raises for review the potential pitfalls in this project, including the possibility of coercion, impotence, or waste. Ultimately, this article aims to pave the way for more constructive, transparent, and fruitful dialogue …

Systemically Important Platforms, Caleb N. Griffin

Faculty Publications

Regulating Big Tech is now a matter of intense public debate. We ask how well Big Tech companies fulfill their role as gatekeepers of the public square. We ponder whether their dominant market positions merit an antitrust response. We assess their culpability and complicity in spreading online misinformation and hate. However, in the many normative debates over how Big Tech should use its power, the source of that power remains largely unexamined.

Big Tech, like Big Tobacco before it, is an industry founded on addiction. Although typically “free” to use, the world’s largest digital platforms exploit users’ dopamine pathways to …

Discursive Incarceration: Black Fragility In A Divided Public Sphere, Meili Steele

Faculty Publications

The expression of fragility has always been a difficult and complex matter for African Americans, for the discourse of mainstream media is set up to both sustain and misrecognize their fragility . Even though the black public sphere split off from the dominant public sphere after the Civil War to enable distinctive forms of expression, the “practiced habits” of which Coates speaks continued working within the structures of the dominant discourse. My essay will analyze the structure of America’s indifference to fragility in six parts. In the first section, I will introduce a normative problematic that can track how the …

Reflections On Teaching Constitutional Law In The Midst Of A Constitutional Crisis, Sean Kammer

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Merits Of Merit: Book Review, Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A New Species Of New Guinea Worm-Eating Snake (Serpentes, Elapidae, Toxicocalamus Boulenger, 1896) From Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea, Jackson R. Roberts, Bulisa Iova, Christopher C. Austin

Faculty Publications

We describe a new species of New Guinea Worm-Eating Snake (Elapidae: Toxicocalamus) from a specimen in the reptile collection of the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery. Toxicocalamus longhagen sp. nov. can be easily distinguished from other species of this genus by the presence of paired subcaudals, a preocular scale unfused from the prefrontal scale, a prefrontal distinct from the internasal scale that contacts the supralabials, a single large posterior temporal and two postocular scales. The new taxon is currently known only from one specimen, which was collected from Mt. Hagen Town in Western Highlands Province, Papua New …

Moral Emotions And Unnamed Wrongs: Revisiting Epistemic Injustice, Usha Nathan

Faculty Publications

Current discussions of hermeneutical injustice, I argue, poorly characterise the cognitive state of victims by failing to account for the communicative success that victims have when they describe their experience to other similarly situated persons. I argue that victims, especially when they suffer moral wrongs that are yet unnamed, are able (1) to grasp certain salient aspects of the wrong they experience and (2) to cultivate the ability to identify instances of the wrong in virtue of moral emotions. By moral emotions I mean emotions like indignation that reflect an agent’s ethical commitments and bear on her ethical assessments. Further, …

A Faith For Today: Saving The Planet, Oystein S. Labianca

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.