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Horizontal gene transfer from Zygo to pea aphid

Another result from the analysis of the recently published genome of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. Nancy Moran and Tyler Jarvik present a study of the origin of the carotenoid production gene in pea aphid. Animals typically cannot make carotenoids so they sought to discover how this is possible. They find that it is [...]

Methylation to the max!

A new paper from the Zilberman lab at UC Berkeley shows the application of high throughput sequencing to the study of DNA methylation in eukaryotes . They generate an huge data set of whole genome methylation patterns in several plants, animals, and five fungi including early diverging Zygomycete. [...]

A cacophony of comparative genomics papers

A nice series of comparative genomics articles have been published in the last few weeks. The pace of genome sequencing has accelerated to the point that we have lots of sequencing projects coming from individual labs and small consortia not necessarily from genome centers. We are seeing a preview of what next (2nd) generation sequencing [...]

Mucor circinelloides genome and annotation available

The Mucormycotina (formerly Zygomycota) fungus Mucor circinelloides Genome Portal is now publicly available at http://genome.jgi-psf.org/Mucci1/Mucci1.home.html.

If you are planning to attend the Fungal Conference in Asilomar, there will be a JGI Workshop on March 19, 2009 at noon in Chapel to show how to use the manual [...]

Escaping the dung pile quickly: Speedy Pilobolus spores

Sporangiophore discharge in the fungus Pilobolus kleinii captured with high speed video. In a paper appearing today in PLoS One, “The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi” Nicholas Money and colleagues including 6 undergraduates and 3 graduate students, have measured the speed of flight of spores discharging from several Ascomycete and Zygomycete dung fungi. [...]

Papers on our desk

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 [...]

Will a zygomycete help solve our energy woes?

I found the headline today, “Biofuels: Fungus Use Improves Corn-to-ethanol Process” and I was curious to find out what fungus they were talking about in the article. It turns out that researchers at Iowa State University found that Rhizopus microsporus is able to grow off part of the leftovers of ethanol production called thin stillage. The [...]

Some links

ResearchBlogging.org

I’ve been too busy to post much these last few days, but here are a few links to some papers I found interesting in my recent browsing.

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Sex in fungi: MAT locus cloned from a Zygomycete

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchOn the cover of this week’s Nature is a picture of Phycomyces blakesleeanus Nature Coverhighlighting the discovery of the MAT locus in this Zygomycete fungus from Alex Idnurm and Joe Heitman and colleagues. While it was previously known that Zygomycetes (the Orange lineage represented by R. oryzae in the tree below) mate, the specific locus has until now, never been discovered. The authors in this study identified the MAT locus through a sequence search looking for HMG-box genes knowing that these are found the Mating Type locus in Basidiomycetes and Ascomycetes. They confirmed the identity through a through set of experiments that included PCR, sequencing and crosses of (+) and (-) strains of P. blakesleeanus, and Southern blots.

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Mucor circinelloides genome update

I recently heard through the grapevine that the Mucor ircinelloides genome 4X assembly was completed by JGI and a BLAST server is available if you contact the authors. Mucorales (previously Zygomycota which is not monophyletic) includes previously sequenced Rhizopus oryzae and Phycomyces blakesleeanus which we’ve blogged about before.

Mucor is model system for the Zygos/Mucorales as it can be transformed [...]