The illustrated life cycle of<i>Microbotryum</i>on the host plant<i>Silene latifolia</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The plant-parasitic genus Microbotryum (Pucciniomycotina) has been used as a model for various biological studies, but fundamental aspects of its life history have not been documented in detail. The smut fungus is characterized by a dimorphic life cycle with a haploid saprophytic yeast-like stage and a dikaryotic plant-parasitic stage, which bears the teliospores as dispersal agents. In this study, seedlings and flowers of Silene latifolia Poir. (Caryophyllaceae) were inoculated with teliospores or sporidial cells of Microbotryum lychnidis-dioicae (DC. ex Liro) G. Deml & Oberw. and the germination of teliospores, the infection process, and the proliferation in the host tissue were documented in vivo using light and electron microscopy. Although germination of the teliospore is crucial for the establishment of Microbotryum, basidium development is variable under natural conditions. In flowers, where the amount of nutrients is thought to be high, the fungus propagates as sporidia, and mating of compatible cells takes place only when flowers are withering and nutrients are decreasing. On cotyledons (i.e., nutrient-depleted conditions), conjugation occurs shortly after teliospore germination, often via intrapromycelial mating. After formation of an infectious hypha with an appressorium, the invasion of the host occurs by direct penetration of the epidermis. While the growth in the plant is typically intercellular, long distance proliferation seems mediated through xylem tracheary elements. At the beginning of the vegetation period, fungal cells were found between meristematic shoot host cells, indicating a dormant phase inside the plant. By using different microscopy techniques, many life stages of Microbotryum are illustrated for the first time, thereby allowing new interpretations of laboratory data.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".