The Hyphal Tip

Nature News has a cool story about peering into amber with X-rays from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. There are some great images of wasps and spiders that could be gleaned from the otherwise opaque amber. Could one also determine fungal spore characteristics from this sort of scan?

We may have to reevaluate whether Saccharomyces cerevisiae alone is the species used to brew beer.  A paper from Gonzalez et al describes results from PCR-RFLP comparison of 24 brewing strains identifies evidence for S. cerevisiae x S. kudriavzevii hybrids.  Although this hybridization is not unprecedented, most seem to be related to cultivated brewing or fermentation