Science Progress (2004), 87 (2)

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Science Progress (2004), 87 (2), 79-99

Endophytes – the chemical

synthesizers inside plants

NOEL L. OWEN AND NICHOLAS HUNDLEY

Endophytes are microbial entities that live within living tissues of plants.

In most cases their relationship with the host plant is symbiotic and probably

mutualistic. Many are capable of synthesizing bio-active compounds

that can be used by the plant for defense against pathogenic fungi and bacteria.

Some of these compounds have proven useful for novel drug discovery.

By encouraging the endophytes to grow outside the plant in nutrient

rich media, it is possible to harvest the bio-active compounds that they produce.

However, much needs to be discovered and understood about the

host/endophyte relationship before we can fully utilize endophytes in the

discovery of medicinally important compounds.

Keywords: endophytes, fungi, bacteria, bio-active compounds

Science Progress (2004), 87 (2), 101-130

Solar transient events and their

importance for coronal heating

J. GERRY DOYLE AND MARIA S. MADJARSKA

Over the last decade, the uninterrupted high resolution coverage of the Sun

both from the excellent range of telescopes aboard many spacecrafts and

from ground-based instruments has led to a wealth of observations of smallscale

dynamic events observed from the chromosphere to the transition

region and corona. Since many of these events were observed with different

instruments they show different properties from one another. It is suggested

that many of these phenomena result from small-scale reconnection events

due to the continually evolving magnetic fields as seen at the photospheric

level, although waves are thought to play an important heating role as well.

Nowadays, there is a general consensus that the key to understanding how

the solar plasma is accelerated and heated may well be found in the study

of these small-scale dynamic events. Here we give a brief review of the

range of observed transient features and suggest that these small-scale

events may well have broad implications for the mass and energy balance

of the whole upper atmosphere of the Sun and the solar wind.

Keywords: solar transient events, coronal heating