The Hyphal Tip

If you are interested in fungal genetics and genomics, comparative biology, and of course dancing with fungal geneticists, plan to attend the 25th Fungal Genetics Meeting held at the beautiful Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California. Below is info sent out from the Policy Committee and registration opens in a little over a month.  Budding (and conidiating) artists can also submit a Logo design

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).

Report concludes that a fungal genome database is of "the highest priority".

This is the title as listed in PubMed for this article from Future Medicine about the AAM report on charting future needs and avenues of research on the fungal kingdom.

The American Academy of Microbiology has released a report (PDF) on the Fungal Kingdom outlining importance of research in the kingdom and recommending several areas of priority for future areas of research.

A year ago researchers at James Madison University discovered that, Pedobacter cryoconitis, a bacteria first found on the skin of red backed salamanders, was found to prevent the growth of the chytrid B. dendrobatidis, which is currently decimating frog populations.

A paper in Science from Jason Crawford and colleagues explores the function of polyketide synthetases (PKS) in the synthesis of the secondary metabolite and carcinogen aflatoxin. Previous work (nicely reviewed in the fungi by Nancy Keller and colleagues) has shown the the PKS genes have several domains. These domains include acyl carrier protein (ACP), transacylase (SAT), ketosynthase (KS), malonyl-CoA:ACP transacylase (MAT), “product template” PT, Aand thioesterase/Claisen cyclase (TE/CLC).

A few of the summer meetings that relate to fungal biology and evolution. 

• Genetics and Cell Biology of Basidiomycetes, May 28-June 1, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, MO. Registration deadline April 25.
• North American Pombe Meeting, June 6-8, Los Angeles, CA. Registration deadline May 14.
• Cellular & Molecular Fungal Biology Gordon Conference, June 29-July 4, The Holderness School, Holderness, NH. Registration deadline June 8 (if it doesn't fill up sooner).
• Yeast Genetics and Molecular

Another asexual species of fungi also has evidence for the meiosis-specific process of Repeat Induced Point-mutations (RIP).

Dettman, Anderson, and Kohn recently published a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology on reproductive experimental evolution in two Neurospora crassa populations evolved under different selective conditions. This is a great study that complements work published last year in Nature on experimental evolution in Saccharomyces cerevisiae populations. Neurospora populations were evolved under high salt and low temperature and were started from either high diversity (interspecific crosses, N. crassa vs N. intermedia) or low diversity (intraspecific cross, two N. crassa isolates D143 (Louisiana, USA)and D69 (Ivory Coast)) as described in Figure 1. The experimentally evolved populations were then tested for asexual and sexual fitness (they were taken through complete meiotic cycle throughout the experiment to avoid insure there was selection on the sexual reproduction pathway.