The Hyphal Tip: Fungal Genomes and Comparative Genomics

A paper in PLoS Genetics studied what happens when individual chromosomes of S. cerevisiae are replaced with a homologous copy its sister species, S. paradoxus. Previous work from Ken Wolfe's lab interpreted the differential loss of genes after the whole genome duplication in the Saccharomyces lineage played a role in speciation among the yeast species.

Saprophytic fungi degrade organic matter to release carbon, nitrogen, and other elements locked up in complexes. There is interest in better degradation of recalictrant ligin and cellulose plant matter as part of a bioenergy program. Some fungi are able to break down these plant molecules that would otherwise remain behind when left to digestion by bacteria. Many studies have shown the breadth and efficiency of different fungi in degradation

Nature is reporting that it is now going to expand the methods section in print and online versions of its papers. This will also include a 300 word summary of the methods in the print version as well as a full length methods section in the online version which is not a supplemental methods document. Nature also uses the news piece to remind us that the

Steven Salzberg (who is nominated for the Franklin award at bioinformatics.org) has an opinion piece in Genome Biology proposing wiki technology to help solve the problem of genome annotations getting out of date. The problem comes down to how annotations are banked. Some people regard GenBank as the gold standard master for annotations, but it only provides a bank.

A paper* this week from the Huffnagle lab argues that even though the human pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans can produce an oxylipin similar to prostaglandin, the authors were unable to identify any homologous cyclooxygenase genes in the genome.

Here is an image of Neurospora crassa I took today in my first attempt at squashes. These are from strains that Dave Jacobson grew up with his constructs so I can't take any credit other than playing with the microscope next door. Now my first attempt came out badly, so this is actually Dave's prep as well.

An NPR story on former Taylor Lab postdoc and current Harvard professor Anne Pringle airs tonight. They followed her, Ben, and Frank around collecting Amanita phalloides in Point Reyes in December.

Slime molds are interesting organisms that receive surprisingly little attention. Take the case of Dictyostelium discoideum, a single-celled amoeba that, when starved, will aggregate with other D. discoideum amoeba cells in the neighborhood to create a motile, multicellular structure known as a slug. Eventually the slug differentiates into a reproductive structure, with some individuals making a long stalk and others producing spores.

Your eye contains the same genetic content as your fingernail, but these two tissues look nothing alike. One significant cause of this difference is the tissue specific regulation of the genes in the genome. In some tissues in your body, a gene may be expressed (transcribed) while that same gene may be silent in another tissue type.

Ever wonder what goes on in a cow's multi-chambered stomach? Probably not. I did think about it a little more after a trip to a teaching farm during grad school where we saw a cow with a fistula. This hole provides access to the cows stomach so that samples can be drawn of the community living in the gut and understand how the bovine stomach can digest the recalcitrant cellulose of grasses. Of course all kinds of lovely things live in the dark, anaerobic environment. In fact there is a delicately balanced community of species. When cows are fed corn instead of grass this affects the rumen acid content and allows pathogenic E. coli like O:157 to survive. So far I don't seen any JGI proposal for sequencing of the gut communities of rumens, but maybe that should be proposed. Rumen fungi are probably not on your keyword list, but these fungi are extremomophiles living in highly anaerobic environment. A paper in Microbiology details an analysis of the genome of the anaerobic fungus Orpinomyces.