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Papers on our desk

By Jason Stajich, on August 24th, 2008

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 [...]

August 24th, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Category: ascomycota, bioinformatics, comparative, fungi, sexual reproduction, zygomycete | 2 comments

Sex in fungi: MAT locus cloned from a Zygomycete

By Jason Stajich, on January 13th, 2008

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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January 13th, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Category: basidiomycota, bioinformatics, comparative, evolution, functional, recombination, sexual reproduction, zygomycete | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Fungal Genetics 2007 details

By Jason Stajich, on March 28th, 2007

I’m including a recapping as many of the talks as I remember. There were 6 concurrent sessions each afternoon so you have to miss a lot of talks. The conference was bursting at the seams as it was- at least 140 people had to be turned away beyond the 750 who attended.

If there was any theme in the conference it was “Hey we are all using these genome sequences”. [...]

March 28th, 2007 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: Fungal Genetics, bioinformatics, chytridomycota, cryptococcus, dothideomycetes, euriotiomycetes, filamentous, glomeromycota, homobasidiomycota, horizontal gene transfer, neurospora, news, sordariomycetes, zygomycete | 2 comments