The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa responds to light in complex ways. To thoroughly
study the transcriptional response of this organism to light, RNA-seq was used to analyze capped and
polyadenylated mRNA prepared from mycelium grown for 24 hr in the dark and then exposed to light for
0 (control) 15,...
Full Text:
Characterization of Light-Regulated
Genes in Neurospora crassa
Cheng Wu,* Fei Yang,* Kristina M. Smith,† Matthew
In response to genotoxic stress, ATR and ATM kinases phosphorylate H2A in fungi and H2AX in animals on a C-terminal serine.
The resulting modified histone, called γH2A, recruits chromatin-binding proteins that stabilize stalled replication forks or promote
DNA double-strand-break repair. To identify genomic loci that might be prone to replication...
Background: Supernumerary chromosomes have been found in many organisms. In fungi, these “accessory” or “dispensable” chromosomes are present at different frequencies in populations and are usually characterized by higher repetitive DNA content and lower gene density when compared to the core chromosomes. In the reference strain of the wheat pathogen,...
Infections of fungi by mycoviruses are often symptomless but sometimes also fatal, as they perturb sporulation, growth, and, if applicable, virulence of the fungal host. Hypovirulence-inducing mycoviruses, therefore, represent a powerful means to defeat fungal epidemics on crop plants. Infection with Fusarium graminearum virus China 9 (FgV-ch9), a double-stranded RNA...
Excess fatty acids and sterols are stored as triacylglycerols and sterol esters in
specialized cellular organelles, called lipid droplets. Understanding what determines the cellular
amount of neutral lipids and their packaging into lipid droplets is of fundamental and
applied interest. Using two species of fission yeast, we show that cycling...
Background: In the leuphotrochozoan parasitic platyhelminth Schistosoma mansoni, male individuals are homogametic (ZZ) whereas females are heterogametic (ZW). To elucidate the mechanisms that led to the emergence of sex chromosomes, we compared the genomic sequence and the chromatin structure of male and female individuals. As for many eukaryotes, the lower...
Plant pathogens secrete an arsenal of small secreted proteins (SSPs) acting as effectors that modulate host immunity to
facilitate infection. SSP-encoding genes are often located in particular genomic environments and show waves of concerted
expression at diverse stages of plant infection. To date, little is known about the regulation of...
Fungi are a large group of eukaryotes found in nearly all ecosystems. More than 250 fungal genomes have already been sequenced, greatly improving our understanding of fungal evolution, physiology, and development. However, for the Pezizomycetes, an early-diverging lineage of filamentous ascomycetes, there is so far only one genome available, namely...