SUMMARY Basidiomycete fungi subsist on various types of plant material in diverse environments, from living and dead trees and forest litter to crops and grasses and to decaying plant matter in soils. Due to the variation in their natural carbon sources, basidiomycetes have highly varied plant-polysaccharide-degrading capabilities. This topic is not as well studied for basidiomycetes as for asc...

The frequency (frq) locus of Neurospora crassa plays a key role in the organization of circadian rhythms. Similar timing systems have been found in nearly all eukaryotes as well as some prokaryotes; thus, frq may be an excellent gene with which to conduct evolutionary studies. To investigate, we used the cloned frq locus from ascomycete fungi representing two classical taxonomic classes and thr...

Over the last 30 years, the growing immunocompromised population has created fertile ground for opportunistic pathogens, particularly those from the Kingdom Fungi. While the range of fungal species causing infections is increasing, there remain three key culprits [1]. Firstly, the ascomycete yeast Candida albicans is responsible for the greatest number of fungal infections, particularly those a...

Traditional fruiting body-based classification of ascomycetes has been under attack for 2 decades. Fruiting-body types can converge, and few researchers now assume that either the closed fruiting bodies (cleistothecia) characterizing the class Plectomycetes or the flask-shaped fruiting bodies (perithecia) characterizing the class Pyrenomycetes are stable, unifying characters. Unless we identify...

BACKGROUND We investigated the determinants of sexual identity in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The higher fungi are divided into the ascomycetes and the basidiomycetes. Most ascomycetes have two mating types: one (called α in yeasts and MAT1-1 in filamentous fungi) produces a small, unmodified, peptide pheromone, and the other (a in yeasts and MAT1-2 in filamentous fungi) produce...

The MADS box protein MCM1 controls diverse developmental processes and is essential for fruiting body formation in the homothallic ascomycete Sordaria macrospora. MADS box proteins derive their regulatory specificity from a wide range of different protein interactions. We have recently shown that the S. macrospora MCM1 is able to interact with the alpha-domain mating-type protein SMTA-1. To fur...