The Hyphal Tip

The excellent microbiology blog Small Things Considered is celebrating the beginning of mushroom collecting season with a weeks worth of fungal posts. So far, they have discussed identifying poisonous mushrooms AFTER cooking them using real-time PCR, how wood-rotting fungi might actually improve the sound of your favorite stringed instrument, and the toxins found in the some of the deadly species of Amanita.

A quick post of some recent comparative genomics papers on our desk that are worth a look.

• Khaldi N, Wolfe KH (2008) Elusive Origins of the Extra Genes in Aspergillus oryzae. PLoS ONE 3(8): e3036. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003036. This was a cool but somewhat controversal finding presented at Fungal Genetics last year.
• Casselton, LA. Fungal sex genes - searching for the ancestors. doi: 10.1002/bies.20782. A review of recent findings about the Zygomycete MAT locus.
• Soanes DM, Alam I, Cornell M, Wong HM, Hedeler C, et al. (2008) Comparative Genome Analysis of Filamentous Fungi Reveals Gene Family Expansions Associated with Fungal Pathogenesis. PLoS ONE 3(6): e2300. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002300
• Lee DW, Freitag M, Selker EU, Aramayo R (2008) A Cytosine Methyltransferase Homologue Is Essential for Sexual Development in Aspergillus nidulans. PLoS ONE 3(6): e2531. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002531

An outbreak of a fungal infection called "white-nose syndrome" is killing bats in the Northeastern US.  This New Scientist article mentions the outbreak briefly and an NPR story and recent Boston Globe story also gives it some coverage. 

The first of several dermatophyte fungal genomes, [[Microsporum gypseum]], has been released at the Broad Dermatophyte site.  Two Tricophyton species and another Microsporum genome should follow soon. These dermatophyte fungi are Onygenales (Ascomycota) fungi (like Coccidioides and Histoplasma).