Gilbertella persicaria is a phytopathogenic fungus that causes soft rot in several fruit crops. Here, I report the draft genome sequence of G. persicaria strain SHK1000 isolated from fig fruit, and consisting of total length 30.9 Mbp across 60 contigs with N50 3.6 Mbp and 99.2% BUSCO completeness.
Fig (Ficus carica L.) has been widely cultivated in temperate and subtropical regions for its nutritional and medicinal value. From October to December 2024 and June to August 2025, sooty spot disease (incidence 85%) was observed two days postharvest in fig fruits in a storage room (25°C, 80% relative humidity) at the experimental orchard of the Toyo Institute of Food Technology (34.81926°N, 135.40315°E) in Hyogo prefecture, Japan. The disease (incidence >80%) was also found in figs collected from 31 markets in major fig-producing prefectures. The symptoms appeared as necrotic lesions covered with dark-green mycelia. Tissue segments of symptomatic fruits were surface-sterilized with 70% ethanol, followed by three rinses with sterile water, and placed on potato dextrose agar (PDA). After three days of incubation at 25°C, 16 isolates were obtained from independent symptomatic fruits by hyphal-tip isolation. Each isolate colony was grayish-green to dark-green, exhibited a velvety texture with a white margin, and grew at an average rate of 2.85 mm daily at 25°C on PDA. Microscopic observations revealed that the conidiophores were solitary, erect, hyaline to light brown, straight or slightly flexuous, and septate. Ramoconidia were light brown, cylindrical to obovoid, aseptate, and 8.55 to 20.28 × 2.48 to 4.77 µm (12.01 × 3.25 µm, n = 50). Conidia were light brown, catenate in branched chains, 1 to 4 conidia in the unbranched part, obovoid to limoniform, aseptate, and 3.32 to 5.45 × 2.28 to 3.19 µm (4.36 × 2.77 µm, n = 50). The morphological characteristics corresponded to those of Cladosporium tenuissimum (Bensch et al. 2015). Three representative isolates, SHK1100 (from cv. Brunswick), SHK1110 (from cv. San Piero), and SHK1120 (from cv. Malta), were selected for molecular identification and deposited at the Research Center of Genetic Resources, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, with accession numbers MAFF248114–MAFF248116. The internal transcribed spacer of rDNA (ITS), translation elongation factor-1α (TEF1), and actin (ACT) were amplified using the primer sets ITS4/ITS5 (White 1990), EF1-728F/EF1-986R, and ACT-512F/ACT-783R (Carbone and Kohn 1999), respectively. The nucleotide sequences of ITS (LC880265–LC880267), TEF1 (LC880268–LC880270), and ACT (LC880271–LC880273) showed 100% (NR_119855), 97.98% (KU605782), and 100% (OQ185030) identity to the sequences of C. tenuissimum in the NCBI, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the isolates could be grouped into the same clade as other C. tenuissimum strains. To assess pathogenicity, unwounded and wounded fruits were sprayed with a conidial suspension (1 × 106 conidia/ml) or sterile water. The inoculated fruits were kept in a moist chamber (25°C, 80% relative humidity) for two days. All wounded fruits inoculated with fungal conidia exhibited necrotic symptoms identical to those observed in diseased postharvest fruits. No symptoms were observed in the unwounded fruits inoculated with fungal conidia or in the wounded fruits treated with the sterile water. C. tenuissimum was reisolated from the diseased fruits based on morphological and molecular identifications, fulfilling Koch’s postulates. Fruit diseases caused by C. tenuissimum have been reported on peach (Nativitas-Lima et al. 2023), melon (Gomes et al. 2023), and dekopon citrus (Xiao et al. 2023). To the best of my knowledge, this is the first report of C. tenuissimum causing sooty spot of F. carica fruit in Japan.
The sustained decline in Japanese Manila clam landings has increased interest in complementary bivalve food resources. This descriptive study compared one pooled soft-tissue analytical sample from each of four sources: Ruditapes philippinarum from Akkeshi, Mangoku-ura, and a commercial Chinese-origin source, and the warm-water clam Ruditapes variegatus from Ishigaki Island. Each pooled sample comprised approximately 250 g of soft tissue from at least 40 individuals; independent lot-level biological replication was not available, so no inferential statistical comparisons were made. Proximate composition, amino acids, taurine, vitamin-related compounds, minerals, and fatty acids were analyzed, and mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequencing together with morphology confirmed the Ishigaki material as R. variegatus. Wet-weight total amino acid contents were 8.670, 6.800, 6.135, and 5.555 g/100 g in the Akkeshi, Ishigaki, Mangoku-ura, and Chinese-origin pooled samples, respectively. After normalization, total amino acid contents ranged from 507.0 to 559.4 mg/g dry matter and from 829.1 to 850.0 mg/g protein, indicating that much of the wet-weight contrast reflected differences in tissue moisture and protein concentration. Adult-reference amino acid scores ranged from 97.1 to 100 across the four composites. The Akkeshi pooled sample also showed comparatively high taurine and vitamin A-related values. Sea surface temperature and satellite chlorophyll-a data were used only to document source-region environmental context and were not treated as causal predictors of composition. Within the limits of this pooled-sample survey, the food-composition profile of taxonomically verified Ishigaki R. variegatus supports further replicated evaluation of this species as a complementary clam-like food resource.
We examined the effects of fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide, administered concurrently with the onset of a high-fat diet (HFD) for a short period in C57BL/6 N mice to evaluate its immunological effects under obesity-inducing conditions. Numerous genes that were downregulated in the HFD group relative to the control-diet group were restored in the HFD + fucoidan group; these genes were mainly associated with inflammatory responses and cellular functions, including migration and viability, as identified by DNA microarray analysis. Upstream regulator analysis in ingenuity pathway analysis identified numerous cytokines and inflammatory mediators. Quantitative PCR confirmed that the expression of selected inflammatory cytokine genes-particularly Ifn-γ and Il-5-was decreased in the HFD group but restored in the HFD + fucoidan group. Our study suggests that fucoidan administered concurrently with an HFD attenuates HFD-induced downregulation of inflammatory and immune-related functions, including T- and B-cell functions, and may improve HFD-induced immune dysfunction and imbalance.
The incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasing globally, and because no curative treatments exist, prevention is essential. We previously found that food-derived protease-digested whitebait (WPD) inhibits (3-secretase (BACE1), which drives amyloid-(3 production, although the responsible components were unknown. Herein, we identified two WPD fractions, F4B and L1D, with BACE1 inhibitory activity. In AD model mice, F4B significantly suppressed amyloid-(3 accumulation in the cerebral cortex, whereas L1D tended to suppress accumulation (p = 0.16). Both fractions reduced glial fibrillary acidic protein expression, indicating in vivo efficacy. F4B absorbed ultraviolet light and lost activity after RNase treatment. The IC50 value of RNA extracted from F4B was comparable with that of the pre-extracted sample. L1D exhibited no ultraviolet absorption, and its activity was lost after chondroitin sulfate-specific degradation, confirming chondroitin sulfate as its active component. These findings indicate that RNA and chondroitin sulfate in WPD act as BACE1 inhibitors with potential for AD prevention.
