Some Pythium species appear to have evolved to colonize the roots

of mature trees Quisinostat cell line to prevent the establishment of young trees of the same species under the canopy. In such natural system, it would be beneficial to the well established trees to maintain a certain level of root colonization by rather weak root pathogen that are more aggressive on seedlings or young plants. However, in a horticulture or sylviculture situation where mature trees are removed or harvested to be replaced by young saplings, this could lead to a significant replant problem. Conclusion The oomycete community desperately needs an initiative such as the Assembling selleckchem the Tree of Life (AFTOL) which served to really unify selleck mycologists from a wide range of expertise. One of the unexpected side effects of the fact that many mycologists working on oomycetes are no longer interacting with mycological societies has been the deepening of the split between the marine/aquatic

and terrestrial scientific communities. The major oomycete symposia and workshops that are now found at phytopathological meetings such as the International Congress of Plant Pathology or the American Phytopathological Society do focus on terrestrial and plant pathogenic species. Saprophytic growth in oomycetes appears to have derived from simple holocarpic parasites living in the ocean (Beakes et al. 2011). In order to generate a complete phylogeny of oomycetes and truly understand their evolution, a better coverage of obligate parasites from less well known environments and hosts will be needed (e.g. Sekimoto et al. 2008b). Even for the obligate parasites of plants such as the downy mildews, advances are being made (e.g. Thines et al. 2008) but a major effort will be required to generate molecular data for many of the described species that are in herbaria. As we are working at building up a robust tree of life for oomycetes and as we are sequencing multiple markers for an increasing

number of taxa, it is becoming apparent that some well known and economically important genera are polyphyletic (e.g. Riethmüller et al. 2002). Amisulpride We should refrain from sweeping reorganization of the oomycetes and their genera, particularly when many practitioners are routinely using the names for their work, until we have a more robust multigene phylogenetic framework. There is no doubt that molecular biology will continue to play a leading role with the advent of technologies like single DNA molecule sequencing which should provide complete genome sequences at what used to be the cost to sequence a few genes. Single molecule DNA sequencing might help to solve the issue of obtaining sequence data from type specimens.