The Hyphal Tip

Genome Technology highlights the very cool thing about next-gen sequencing - it puts the power in the hands of the researchers to explore genome sequence and doesn’t limit them to projects only funded through sequencing centers. The Genome Technology piece highlights work at Duke to sequence the genome Cladonia grayi, a lichenized fungus, with 454 technology at Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy through their next-gen sequencing program.

A Brevia piece in Science today describes efforts to describe the causal agent in white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats which appears to be contributing to bat decline. According to the authors, previous work had described an uncharacterized fungus associated with bats that showed signs of being sick with WNS.

Trying a little experiment here. I’ve started a wiki page for [[Job opportunities|jobs]] that fall into the general category of genomics, fungi, and evolution and added a tab link to this at the top of the blog site. At this point I am only posting academic positions (Faculty and postdoctoral positions) but it may be possible to include industry and government postings if there is sufficient interest.

You are welcome to sign up for a wiki account and add links for other positions.

Registration opens today for the 25th Fungal Genetics conference at Asilomar. The preliminary program is also available with a great slate of speakers already lined up and plenty of opportunity for many students and postdocs to present their work.

The 24th conference help in 2007 was great and expect a similar great opportunity for sharing science and networking with the fungal genetics community.

Related links

• Attend Fungal Genetics 2009!
• Fungal Genetics 2007 summary

Nature news picked up an article that a Stachybotrys sp. can remove sulfur from crude oil and which would be more efficient than traditional chemical and heat methods. You may remember that some Stachybotrys are a nasty black indoor mold that can cause indoor air quality problems. It will be quite interesting to see more about this particular species once it has been better followed up.

A paper (Park et al, BMC Genomics) from Fungal Bioinformatics Lab at Seoul University in South Korea describes their new “Fungal P450 Database”. The database contains sequence, names, and genome links for P450’s (or Cytochrome P450s) identified by similarity and phylogenetic classification from genome annotations.