By Jason Stajich, on February 8th, 2010
An article in PLoS Pathogens by Morris et al describe a hypothesis about the evolution and origins of plant pathogens applying the parallel theories to the emergence of medically relevant pathogens. The authors highlight the importance of understanding the evolution of organisms in the context of emerging pathogens like Puccinia Ug99 for our ability [...]
By Jason Stajich, on September 29th, 2009
As part of the dermatophyte efforts and emerging infectious diseases the Fungal Genome Initiative at the Broad Institute will be sequencing the genome of Geomyces destructans. G. destructans is linked to the white-nose syndrome in Bats.
See also some recent posts on white-nose syndrome.
By Jason Stajich, on November 23rd, 2008
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 [...]
By Jason Stajich, on October 31st, 2008
A Brevia piece in Science today describes efforts to describe the causal agent in white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats which appears to be contributing to bat decline. According to the authors, previous work had described an uncharacterized fungus associated with bats that showed signs of being sick with WNS. [...]
By Jason Stajich, on July 27th, 2008
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 [...]
By Jason Stajich, on July 17th, 2008
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 [...]
By Chris Villalta, on June 5th, 2008
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.
By Jason Stajich, on April 29th, 2008
Spread of wheat rust Puccinia strain Ug99 and consequences on already strained food supplies is discussed in an Op-Ed piece covered in [...]
By Jason Stajich, on April 27th, 2008
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). [...]
By Jason Stajich, on April 5th, 2008
Another asexual species of fungi also has evidence for the meiosis-specific process of Repeat Induced Point-mutations (RIP). [...]