Striga hermonthica Striga hermonthica Striga hermonthica, commonly known as purple witchweed or giant witchweed, is a hemiparasitic plant that belongs to the family Orobanchaceae. It is devastating to major crops such as sorghum ("Sorghum bicolor") and rice ("Oryza sativa"). In sub-Saharan Africa, apart from sorghum and rice, it also infests maize ("Zea mays"), pearl millet ("Pennisetum glaucum"), and sugar cane ("Saccharum officinarum"). "Striga hermonthica" has undergone horizontal gene transfer from "Sorghum" to its nuclear genome. The "S. hermonthica" gene, "ShContig9483", is most like a "Sorghum bicolor" gene, and additionally shows significant but lesser similarity to a gene from "Oryza sativa". It shows
Helitron (biology) Helitron (biology) Helitrons are one of the three groups of eukaryotic class 2 transposable elements (TEs) so far described. They are the eukaryotic rolling-circle transposable elements which are hypothesized to transpose by a rolling circle replication mechanism via a single-stranded DNA intermediate. They were first discovered in plants ("Arabidopsis thaliana" and "Oryza sativa") and in the nematode "Caenorhabditis elegans", and now they have been identified in a diverse range of species, from protists to mammals. Helitrons make up a substantial fraction of many genomes where non-autonomous elements frequently outnumber the putative autonomous partner. Helitrons seem to have a major role