The Hyphal Tip

Genome survey sequencing (1.9X coverage) was generated for Moniliophthora perniciosa, the cause of witches’ broom disease on cacao plants. The sequence for this basidiomycete plant pathogen was published in BMC Genomics this week. The authors report a higher number of ROS metabolism and P450 genes. Evaluating whether these copy number differences are significantly different [...]

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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

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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.

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Just noticed that the [[JGI]] has released the Cochliobolus heterostrophus genome sequence at their site predicting 9,633 protein-coding genes.  Torrey Mesa Research Institute had access to a sequence many years ago, but it isn’t until now that public version of this genome is available.  Cochliobolus is has been a model plant pathogen system and its production of T-Toxin by a PKS gene (Yang et al)

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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.

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Looks like the USDA, Mars (the candy company), and IBM are partnering up to sequence the Cacao plants genome for everyone to use. Here is the article over at BBC News.

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NPR had a story this weekend on Cocoa plantation collapse and the ecological aftermath of the changes the witches’ broom fungus [[Moniliophthora perniciosa]] has wreaked. The genome sequence project for this Homobasidiomycete fungus is underway.

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Just finished attending Genetics and Cell Biology of Basidiomycetes in Cape Girardeau, MO which was an intimate gathering of basidiomycetaphiles.  I learned about systems that are used for studying fruiting body development, genetic mapping, pheromone and mating genes, kinesin dynamics, meoitic gene regulation, and a host of topics.  I’m happy I got a chance to meet more folks in the community and learned about where informatics is needed

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This month’s Genetics has a series of articles exploring the genome (published last year & freely available at Science) of the green algae [[Chlamydomonas reinhardtii]]. These manuscripts are primarily genome analyses making for a very bioinformatics focused issue of Genetics. Some of the highlights include:

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The [[Trichoderma reesei]] genome paper was recently published in Nature Biotechnology from Diego Martinez at [[LANL]] with collaborators at [[JGI]], [[LBNL]], and others. This fungus was chosen for sequencing because it was found on canvas tents eating the cotton material suggesting it may be a good candidate for degrading cellulose plant material as part of cellulosic ethanol production.

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