Rotem, N. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2025

Make it grow, Pseudozyma aphidis extract promotes plant growth

Increasing global population demands higher agricultural yield while avoiding the use of harmful products in agriculture. The use of beneficial micro-organisms is an Eco-friendly approach to reduce the use of fertilizers and plant growth promoting (PGP) products. This study is focused on the fungus Pseudozyma aphidis (P. aphidis), a yeast like dimorphic fungus beneficial to plants and related to the phytopathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis that causes corn smut disease. Our lab isolated a unique P. aphidis strain (PA12) that has shown significant plant protection and plant growth activity. We extracted and screened the active PGP fraction from PA12, calibrated treatment dosage and application method. Tomato, corn and melon plants treated with PA12 extract exhibited; increased germination, shoot length, biomass and higher yield. Our results demonstrate the potential of P. aphidis extract application as an eco-friendly PGP agent that can contribute to reduction of harmful agricultural products usage.

plant biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Multiplexed code of navigation variables in the anterior limbic system

The brains navigation system integrates multimodal cues to create a sense of position and orientation. Here we used a multimodal model to systematically assess how neurons in the anterior thalamic nuclei, retrosplenial cortex and anterior hippocampus of mice, as well as in the cingulum fiber bundle and the white matter regions surrounding the hippocampus, encode an array of navigational variables when animals forage in a circular arena. In addition to coding head direction, we found that some thalamic cells encode the animals allocentric position, similar to place cells. We also found that a large fraction of retrosplenial neurons, as well as some hippocampal neurons, encode the egocentric position of the arenas boundary. We compared the multimodal model to traditional methods of head direction tuning and place field analysis, and found that the latter were inapplicable to multimodal regions such as the anterior thalamus and retrosplenial cortex. Our results draw a new picture of the signals carried and outputted by the anterior thalamus and retrosplenial cortex, offer new insights on navigational variables represented in the hippocampus and its vicinity, and emphasize the importance of using multimodal models to investigate neural coding throughout the navigation system.

neuroscience↗