The velvet gene, veA, co-ordinates asexual and sexual development in the homothallic fungal species Aspergillus nidulans. Studies in Aspergillus parasiticus and Aspergillus fumigatus demonstrated that veA also regulates morphological differentiation in these species. Whether veA has the same role in morphogenesis in other fungal genera has not been investigated. In this work, we studied the rol...

The progress made in the molecular characterization of the mating types in several filamentous ascomycetes has allowed us to better understand their role in sexual development and has brought to light interesting biological problems. The mating types of Neurospora crassa, Podospora anserina, and Cochliobolus heterostrophus consist of unrelated and unique sequences containing one or several gene...

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a model eukaryotic organism for classical genetics and genomics, and yet its ecology is still largely unknown. In this work, a population genetic analysis was performed on five yeast populations isolated from wine-making areas with different enological practices using simple sequence repeats and restriction fragment length polymorphism of mitochondrial DNA as molecul...

A recent study to determine the cause of collar and root rot disease outbreaks of cold tolerant Eucalyptus species in South Africa resulted in the isolation of two putative new Phytophthora species. Based on phylogenetic comparisons using the ITS and beta-tubulin gene regions, these species were shown to be distinct from known species. These differences were also supported by robust morphologic...

Mutations affecting the synthesis of the sporulation amyloglucosidase were isolated in a homothallic strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, SCMS7-1. Two were found, both of which were deficient in sporulation at 34 degrees. One, SL484, sporulated to 50% normal levels at 30 degrees but less than 5% at 34 degrees or 22 degrees. The other, SL641, failed to sporulate at any temperature. Both mutants w...

RIP (repeat-induced point mutation) efficiently mutates repeated sequences in the sexual phase of the Neurospora crassa life cycle. Nevertheless, an active LINE-like retrotransposon, Tad, was found in a N. crassa strain from Adiopodoumé. The possibility was tested that Tad might be resistant to RIP, or that the Adiopodoumé strain might be incompetent for RIP. Tad elements derived from the Adiop...

ABSTRACT Colletotrichum crown rot of strawberry in Florida is caused primarily by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. To determine potential inoculum sources, isolates of Colletotrichum spp. from strawberry and various noncultivated plants growing in the areas adjacent to strawberry fields were collected from different sites. Species-specific internal transcribed spacer primers for C. gloeosporioid...

The Candida Gene Order Browser (CGOB) was developed as a tool to visualize and analyze synteny relationships in multiple Candida species, and to provide an accurate, manually curated set of orthologous Candida genes for evolutionary analyses. Here, we describe major improvements to CGOB. The underlying structure of the database has been changed significantly. Genomic features are now based dire...

In non-motile fungi, sexual reproduction relies on strong morphogenetic changes in response to pheromone signaling. We report here on a systematic screen for morphological abnormalities of the mating process in fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. We derived a homothallic (self-fertile) collection of viable deletions, which, upon visual screening, revealed a plethora of phenotypes affecting...

Various ascomycete fungi possess sex-specific molecular mechanisms, such as repeat-induced point mutations, meiotic silencing by unpaired DNA, and unusual adenosine-to-inosine RNA editing, for genome defense or gene regulation. Using a combined analysis of functional genetics and deep sequencing of small noncoding RNA (sRNA), mRNA, and the degradome, we found that the sex-specifically induced e...