By Jason Stajich, on September 14th, 2009
A nice series of comparative genomics articles have been published in the last few weeks. The pace of genome sequencing has accelerated to the point that we have lots of sequencing projects coming from individual labs and small consortia not necessarily from genome centers. We are seeing a preview of what next (2nd) generation [...]
By Jason Stajich, on June 13th, 2009
Genome sequencing is underway on several early branches in the Opisthokont and some related linages as part of the “Origins of Multicellularity” project at the Broad Institute (BI) include some recently made available assemblies for:
Allomyces macrogynus (Blastocladiomycota “Chytrid”)
Capsaspora owczarzaki (Ichthyosporea)
Already available data from
Monosiga brevicolis (JGI)
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (JGI, BI) (Chytridiomycota)
Still in progress (BI)
Amastigomonas sp
Amoebidium parasiticum
Nuclearia simplex
Salpingoeca or [...]
By Jason Stajich, on May 26th, 2009
Too much on my plate as of late, so I’m woefully behind on posting much on interesting papers or news. Here’s a short list of links and papers that are worth a look though.
“Evolution of pathogenicity and sexual reproduction in eight Candida genomes” published (Nature)
NYT Science article sort of summarizing the good, bad, and ugly of fungi [...]
By Jason Stajich, on March 1st, 2009

I cheered the Sanger-Wellcome SGRP group work to generate multiple Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. paradoxus strain genome sequences. They submitted a version of the manuscript to Nature precedings and it is now published in Nature AOP showing that submitting to a preprint server doesn’t necessarily hurt your manuscript getting published in this instance. The research groups explored the impact of domestication (as was also recently done for the sake and soy sauce worker fungus, Aspergillus oryzae) on the Saccharomyces genome by comparing individuals from wild strains of S. [...]
By Jason Stajich, on November 7th, 2008
The DNA sequence of Melampsora larici-populina has been determined by the U.S. Department of Energy DOE Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI). Annotations of the v1.0 assembly of Melampsora laricis-populina are publicly available at
By Jason Stajich, on October 31st, 2008
Genome Technology highlights the very cool thing about next-gen sequencing – it puts the power in the hands of the researchers to explore genome sequence and doesn’t limit them to projects only funded through sequencing centers. The Genome Technology piece highlights work at Duke to sequence the genome Cladonia grayi, a lichenized fungus, with 454 technology at Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy through their next-gen sequencing program. [...]
By Jason Stajich, on August 6th, 2008
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 [...]
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 9th, 2008
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 [...]
By Chris Villalta, on June 26th, 2008
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.