Publicaties

Human evaluation in often considered to be the gold standard method of evaluating a Natural Language Generation system. However, whilst its importance is accepted by the community at large, the quality of its execution is often brought into question. In this position paper, we argue that the generation of more esoteric forms of language - humour, irony and sarcasm - constitutes a subdomain where the characteristics of selected evaluator panels ...

Importance of the work: Since 2001, several viroids have been found and identified in
Thailand in a wide range of economically important crops. However, there has not yet
been any complete and up-to-date information published on the status of all viroids in
Thailand.
Objectives: To provide current and comprehensive information on viroid status,
epidemiology and economic impact in Thailand.
Results: Since 2001, four ...

Columnea latent viroid (CLVd) is one of the most serious tomato diseases. In general, viroids have high mutation rates. This generates a population of variants (so-called quasi-species) that co-exist in their host and exhibit a huge level of genetic diversity. To study the population of CLVd in individual host plants, we used amplicon sequencing using specific CLVd primers linked with a sample-specific index sequence to amplify libraries. An ...

Reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) is a fast and reliable RNA di-agnostic assay, outcompeting distinctly conventional reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in robustness, analytical sensitivity, and specificity. In addition, it is also highly cost-effective, and the procedure is far less time consuming. In this work, a PCFVd (Pepper chat fruit viroid) specific RT-LAMP detection assay was ...

This work reports the identification of Hop latent viroid (HLVd) in commercial hop (Humulus lupulus L.) plants in Belgium. Hop plants without clear symptoms were randomly collected in July 2015 during a survey at nine companies near the city of Poperinge, the prime hop-growing region in Belgium. RNA was extracted from twenty six samples using the Spectrum™ Plant Total RNA Kit (Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO,USA), and cDNA was prepared using the ...

Viroids are self replicating non-coding RNAs capable of infecting a wide range of plant hosts. They do not encode any proteins, thus the mechanism by which they escape plant defenses remains unclear. RNAi silencing is a major defense mechanism against virus infections, with the four DCL proteins being principal components of the pathway. We have used Nicotiana benthamiana as a model to study Potato spindle tuber viroid infection. This viroid is ...

Pepper chat fruit viroid (PCFVd) is one of the most important tomato and pepper diseases causing serious losses, affecting productivity, fruit quality and even international seed trade. Reverse transcription Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) is a fast and reliable RNA amplification assay, out competing conventional reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in robustness, analytical sensitivity and specificity, and ...