The Hyphal Tip

The Tremella mesenterica genome portal is live on the JGI site. Tremella is a Basidiomycete jelly fungus and an interesting study system from the perspective of discovery of novel lignin degrading enzymes. It also occupies an interesting phylogenetic position being an outgroup to the human pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus neoformans and C. gattii.

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An avid reader pointed out that I was not entirely thorough in describing that we don’t enough about the V8 agar media that is used to induce mating in Cryptococcus. In fact a great deal of work on mating in this fungus had focused on identifying what pathways are induced by V8 agar that [...]

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A paper in IJSEM describes a new species in the Cryptococcus basidiomycete yeast lineage. The name is proposed as Cryptococcus keelungensis sp. nov. for a strain isolated from the sea surface microlayer. Its identity as a Cryptococcus sp was determined by sequencing of 26S rDNA D1/D2 and ITS loci and molecular phylogenetics. This is quite diverged from the human pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans and C. gattii as the new species falls in the order Filobasidiales while C. neoformans is classified in the order Tremellales. Interestingly, based on the phylogeny in the paper it seems to be relatively close to newly discovered Cryptococcus himalayensis.

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A new and improved annotation of Cryptococcus neoformans var grubii strain H99 (serotype A) has been made available in GenBank and the Broad Institute website. This update is collaboration between several groups providing data and analyses and the annotation team at Broad’s gene calling pipeline.

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The Scientist has an article about airborne opportunistic fungal infections and interviewing several Cryptococcus researchers including Karen Bartlett and James Fraser.
The Encyclopedia of Life website has an article about the Mushroom Observer blog and the opportunity for more volunteers to curate organism pages at EOL.
NY Times article on how bark beetle are spreading fungi and [...]

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NPR’s Science Friday covered fungi with several myco-luminaries on the radiowaves

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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. 

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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.

• FOLy: an integrated database for the classification and functional annotation of fungal oxidoreductases potentially involved in the degradation of lignin and related aromatic compounds – so a database of these enzymes

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What delineates species boundaries in fungi? Much work has been done on biological and phylogenetic species concepts in fungi. Some concepts are reviewed in Taylor et al 2006 and in Taylor et al 2000, and applications can be seen in several pathogens such as Paraccocidiodies, Coccidioides, and the model filamentous (non-pathogenic) fungus Neurospora

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An article in Applied Environmental Biology describes work characterizing microorganisms that degrade materials used to preserve cultural heritage objects. These are some heavy duty synthetic compounds which are commonly used to preserve or treat wood, cover objects to protect them from moisture, light, and avoid direct attack by microbes. This article describes some interesting findings of the types of organisms that attack these preservation materials. Table 1 lists fungi like Aureobasidium pullulans which can degrade Polyvinyl chloride, Chaetomium globosum which has enzymes (someone make sure and describe all of these in the genome sequence) to dissolve Polyurethane, several wood degrading fungi that break down Nylon (Phanerochaete can break down diesel fuel), and melanin producing fungi (like Cryptococcus?) that destroy acrylics.

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