By chris ellison, on August 27th, 2008
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 [...]
By Jason Stajich, on August 24th, 2008
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 [...]
By Jason Stajich, on August 18th, 2008
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 [...]
By Jason Stajich, on August 6th, 2008
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 [...]