Pleurotus eryngii has recently become a major cultivated mushroom; it uses tetrapolar heterothallism as a part of its reproductive process. Sexual development progresses only when the A and B mating types are compatible. Such mating incompatibility occasionally limits the efficiency of breeding programs in which crossing within loci-shared strains or backcrossing strategies are employed. Theref...

In most insects, sex pheromone is processed by an enlarged glomerular complex (macroglomerular complex, MGC) in the male antennal lobe (first-order olfactory center). The MGC of the American cockroach consists of two closely located A- and B-glomeruli which are responsible for processing the major sex pheromone components, periplanone-A and -B, respectively. Using anterograde dye injection, we ...

Sordaria macrospora, a self-fertile filamentous ascomycete, carries genes encoding three different alpha-subunits of heterotrimeric G proteins (gsa, G protein Sordaria alpha subunit). We generated knockout strains for all three gsa genes (Deltagsa1, Deltagsa2, and Deltagsa3) as well as all combinations of double mutants. Phenotypic analysis of single and double mutants showed that the genes for...

BACKGROUND Sex pheromone communication systems may be a major force driving moth speciation by causing behavioral reproductive isolation via assortative meeting of conspecific individuals. The 'E' and 'Z' pheromone races of the European corn borer (ECB) are a textbook example in this respect. 'Z' females produce and 'Z' males preferentially respond to a 'Z' pheromone blend, while the 'E' race c...

Mating is costly for both male and female insects and should therefore only occur if it is likely to be successful. Within one scotophase, which is the dark period of the light cycle, male moths can only produce one single spermatophore, which is transferred to the female during mating. Remating within the same scotophase would thus be unsuccessful. We tested the hypothesis that newly mated mal...

The sexual development and virulence of the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans is controlled by a bipolar mating system determined by a single locus that exists in two alleles, alpha and a. The alpha and a mating-type alleles from two divergent varieties were cloned and sequenced. The C. neoformans mating-type locus is unique, spans >100 kb, and contains more than 20 genes. MAT-encoded pro...

Chemical communication is widely used throughout the animal world including birds (1-3). The skin glands of vertebrates can release chemical signals such as sex pheromones attracting the opposite sex for breeding (1,2,4). But, the uropygial (also called preen or oil) glands of birds have no sex pheromones characterized (2,3,5). Here, we show that females of the budgerigar, Melopsittacus undulat...