The Hyphal Tip: Fungal Genomes and Comparative Genomics

The genome of Podospora anserina S mat+ strain was sequenced by Genoscope and CNRS and published recently in Genome Biology. The genome sequence data has been available for several years, but it is great to see a publication describing the findings.  The 10X genome assembly with ~10,000 genes provides an important dataset for comparisons

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

Interesting blog post that mentions N. crassa and RIP

A paper in Current Genetics describes the discovery of Repeat Induced Polymorphism (RIP) in two Euriotiales fungi.  RIP has been extensively studied in Neurospora crassa and has been identified in other Sordariomycete fungi Magnaporthe, Fusiarium. This is not the first Aspergillus species to have RIP described as it was demonstrated in the biotech workhorse Aspergillus oryzae.  However, I think this study is the first to describe RIP in a putatively asexual fungus.  The evidence for RIP is only found in transposon sequences in the Aspergillus and Penicillium.  A really interesting aspect of this discovery is RIP is thought to only occur during sexual stage, but a sexual state has never been observed for these fungi.  

The genome of the wheat and cereal pathogen Fusarium graminearum was published in Science this week in an article entitled "The Fusarium graminearum Genome Reveals a Link Between Localized Polymorphism and Pathogen Specializationtion". The project was a collaboration of many different Fusarium research groups.

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".