Fungal in Biological News

Major aspergillus genomics supplement published by journal Fungal Genetics and Biology

Amsterdam, 2 April 2009 A major effort from within the Aspergillus community has resulted in the publication of an exceptional supplement by the Elsevier journal Fungal Genetics and Biology ( www.elsevier.com/locate/yfgbi ). The supplement provides extensive studies based on the genome analysis...

Unique fungal collection could hold key to future antibiotics

Royal Holloway and CABI both bring a combination of individual scientific skills, expertise and resources to the project. When brought together, these offer the opportunity to build a highly focused natural products drug discovery operation that will address the urgent need for bringing new antibi...

Gamma interferon could aid fight against fungal infections

Interferon, the superhero cure for viral infections, may be a strong weapon in the battle against fungal infections in immunocompromised patients, according to an article in the November issue of Microbiology Today. Fungal infections (mycoses) were once seen as exotic diseases, but this is chan...

Could fungal collection hold the key to new life-saving drugs?

Scientists may be one step closer to finding new drugs to fight MRSA, cancers and other diseases, after CABI, a leading bioservices organisation announced that its fungal collection will be screened by the University of Strathclyde. CABI houses one of the world’s largest genetic resource collect...

Tearing down the fungal cell wall

Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and Duke University Medical Center have pinpointed a fungal gene that appears to play an important role in the development and virulence of Alternaria brassicicola. A. brassicicola, a destructive fungal pathogen that causes black spot disease on ...

U of M researchers discover genetic key to treating deadly fungal infections

University of Minnesota researchers have discovered how a prevalent fungal pathogen that causes 10,000 deaths per year in the United States overcomes the effects of antifungal drugs by duplicating a section of one of its chromosomes. Candida albicans, a type of yeast present in 80 percent of hu...

New method enables gene disruption in destructive fungal pathogen

Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech, Colorado State University, and Duke University Medical Center have developed a new method to determine gene function on a genome-wide scale in the fungal pathogen Alternaria brassicicola. This destructive fungus causes bla...

Mining for gems in the fungal genome

Ever since penicillin, a byproduct of a fungal mold, was discovered in 1929, scientists have scrutinized fungi for other breakthrough drugs. As reported Jan. 20 in the Journal of Chemistry and Biology, a team led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has developed a new method that may s...

Genetic defenders protect crops from fungal disease

Like waves of soldiers guarding a castle gate, multiple genetic defenders cooperate to protect plant cells against powdery mildew disease, according to a new study. Powdery mildew is a common fungal infection in plants that attacks more than 9,000 species, including many crops such as barley and wh...

Pillows - a hot bed of fungal spores

Researchers at The University of Manchester funded by the Fungal Research Trust have discovered millions of fungal spores right under our noses - in our pillows. Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition...

CO2 sensing proves critical for fungal pathogens to adapt to life in air and human hosts

By using pathogenic fungi as model systems for understanding fungal diseases, two groups of researchers are reporting new work that offers insight into how carbon dioxide (CO2) governs the morphogenic changes that allow pathogenic fungi to survive in different environments and invade the human body...

Symbiotic bacteria protect hunting wasps from fungal infestation

Researchers have discovered a fascinating symbiotic relationship between a wasp species and a newly discovered bacterial species ?a relationship that potentially sheds light on how bacteria can be successfully utilized by higher organisms in defensive mechanisms against other microbes. In the new w...

Light therapy may combat fungal infections, new evidence suggests

A newly discovered mechanism by which an infectious fungus perceives light also plays an important role in its virulence, according to Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators at Duke University Medical Center. The findings suggest that changes in light following fungal invasion of the human b...

Landmark project to map genomics of complex ant systems

...ies can process 15 percent of the leaves within a dense rain forest. An array of microbes have co-evolved along with the ants and the fungi including fungal pathogens that attack the ants' crops, and other microbes that benefit the ants and their crops. As a recipient of the highly competitive 10 Giga-...

New national genome center launched

...a major focus, not only because they infect both animals and plants, but because they are already a source of drugs for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections and therefore they have the potential to provide new, superbug beating antibiotics." ...

Singapore nanotechnology combats fatal brain infections

...eatment and the war on drug-resistant bacteria and fungal infections with novel peptide nanoparticles devel... IBN effectively seek out and destroy bacteria and fungal cells that could cause fatal infections and are hi... nanoparticles can easily enter bacteria, yeast or fungal cells and destabilize them to cause cell death. Fo...

American Society for Microbiology honors Arthur P. Guruswamy

... testing services; his expertise in mycobacteria has directly impacted pediatric patients. Mr. Guruswamy's work led to the identification of important fungal pathogens, which were relatively unknown in pediatric patients, and emerging species of Candida. He is known for his zest to improve the lab and his ...

Scientists tackle the mystery of white-nose syndrome in bats

...t three years has raised numerous questions about the nature of the disease and how to control it. Leading experts in the fields of bat physiology, fungal ecology, ecotoxicology, disease and environmental modeling, among others, will gather at a workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Bio...

Scientists unravel the mystery of white-nose syndrome

...t three years has raised numerous questions about the nature of the disease and how to control it. Leading experts in the fields of bat physiology, fungal ecology, ecotoxicology, disease and environmental modeling, among others, will gather at a workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Bio...

Temporary infidelity may contribute to the stability of ancient relationships

... Fungus-farming ants have cultivated the same fungal crops for 50 million years. Each young ant queen ...aradox that even though the ants transfer a single fungal strain from generation to generation, nests of dif... Ants in the genus Acromyrmex cultivate a single fungal species in their nests: Leucoagaricus gonglyophor...

UCSD researchers make first direct observations of biological particles in high-altitude ice clouds

...ng in fall 2007. Analysis of the ice crystals revealed that they were made up almost entirely of either dust or biological particles such as bacteria, fungal spores and plant material. While it has long been known that microorganisms or parts of them get airborne and travel great distances, this study is th...

Two new studies on circadian rhythms

...roteins for setting the 24-hour cycle. Both studies looked at phosphorylation of the frequency (FRQ) clock protein, a central feedback cog in the fungal clock system. They build on the research of team leaders, Drs. Jay Dunlap and Jennifer Loros, who have documented the workings of FRQ and most other c...

UCI awarded $45 million for infectious disease research

...ease, West Nile encephalitis and Lassa fever. Improved detection of and vaccine development for coccidioidomycosis (also known as valley fever), a fungal disease that primarily affects the lungs. It occurs in California and other parts of the southwestern U.S. and in northern Mexico. "An important p...

Illinois Soil Nitrogen Test measures microbial nitrogen

... sugars in bacterial cell walls were detected, but not alpha-amino acids or fungal chitin. When the findings were applied in a statistical analysis of data fr...n hydrolyzable amino sugars, again indicating a dominance of bacterial over fungal nitrogen recoveries by the ISNT. Taken together, these findings suggest ...

Apple enthusiasts welcome WineCrisp

...it WineCrisp", he added. Korban thinks the new apple will appeal to consumers because of its taste and to growers because of its resistance to the fungal disease apple scab, a primary nemesis of apple growers. Not having to use chemical fungicides to spray for apple scab will lowers costs for growers an...

Mites on hissing coackroach may benefit humans with allergies

... But the cockroaches that do harbor mites also harbor fewer molds on their bodies. In the study, female cockroaches with mites had 64 percent fewer fungal colonies than those lacking mites. In males, the difference was 31 percent, and in nymphs, or younger and smaller cockroaches, there were 24 percent f...

Springer editor receives Butler Award

...College Dublin, Mike Cooke is editor-in-chief of Springer's European Journal of Plant Pathology . His research interests focus on the epidemiology of fungal pathogens of cereals. The prestigious Butler Award consists of an engraved silver medal carrying the SIPP logo. The award is made in memory of Sir ...

Live-in domestics: Mites as maids in tropical rainforest sweat bee nests

...ersity of Texas, Austin. Biani placed the contents of the brood cells in water and plated the liquid on Petri dishes in order to count the number of fungal colonies from nests with and without mites. "When we took away the mites, the bee nests got dirtier. When we added mites, fungus counts went down. It ...

UC Riverside researcher names lichen after President Barack Obama

...of North America, and none of these books are comprehensive," he said. "By studying lichens, I thought I could make a contribution to inventorying the fungal diversity of California, one of the world's biological hot-spots." Knudsen, who has no academic degrees, has published more than 70 peer-reviewed r...

Food security for leaf-cutting ants: Workers and their fungus garden reject endophyte invaders

...sted plant material to fertilize their underground fungal gardens for ~50 million years. New results from the Smithsonian show that both the ants and their fungal crop actively combat fungi coming into the nest in...ust one organism, but each leaf can have dozens of fungal species growing inside, some of which may protect ...

New wheat disease could spread faster than expected

...storic disease problems, such as the catastrophic potato late blight that led to the Irish potato famine of the mid-1840s. And they suggest that a new fungal pathogen of wheat that emerged a few years ago in Uganda may pose a much more urgent threat to wheat production around the world than first thought. ...

Airborne asthma allergens

... A survey of airborne fungi and fungal spores found in Eastern Puerto Rico suggests that ...ungi and correlated the general family groups, the fungal genus, with precise location. Using the Geographic... industry and vehicle traffic that might influence fungal distribution. Airborne fungi are a potential he...

An underwater drugstore?

...ated modern medicine becomes, common ailments like fungal infections can outrun the best of the world's anti...y for cancer) the risk is very high: contracting a fungal infection can be deadly. Now Tel Aviv Universit... drugs of the future to beat unnecessary death by fungal infection. And their secret weapon is the common m...

Portable kit may 1 day detect plant disease before disastrous outbreak

... lead investigator on a $1 million U.S. Department of Agriculture grant that takes aim at protecting the nation's food and agriculture from bacterial, fungal and viral agents on the homeland security select list. PADLOC is what they have already named the futuristic kit Pathogen Detection Lab-On-a-Chip....

Arsenic and old toenails

...an 0.00003%. If a nail looks different from normal that is usually due to physical damage (you stubbed your toe or dropped something on it) or a minor fungal infection that can be easily cleared up by a visit to the doctor." ...

Gene to reduce wheat yield losses

... A new gene that provides resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of hectares of lost wheat yield has been discovered by scientists from the US and Israel. "This is the first step ...

Holy guacamole: invasive beetle threatens Florida's avocados

...movement of invasive species like the Redbay Ambrosia beetle, says it currently is continuing its journey south. The female Ambrosia beetle carries fungal spores on its body, a source of food for adult beetles and their larvae, which then inoculate Redbay trees. The fungus causes laurel wilt, the cause o...

Scientists discover how deadly fungus protects itself

...nal Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ), may help scientists develop new therapies or vaccines against infections caused by Cryptococcus neoformans . These fungal infections occur most commonly in those with compromised immune systems ─ especially AIDS patients and transplant patients who must take lifelon...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Jan. 28, 2009

... be used to remove most of the FCs from grapefruit juice. Now they report that the edible fungus Morchella esculenta, which is from the same major fungal group as the previously tested inedible fungus, removed most of the furanocoumarins from the grapefruit juice. It also reduced grapefruit juice's inhi...

Biologist enhances use of bioinformatic tools and achieves precision in genetic annotation

...s for the identification and annotation of certain fungal and bacterial genes. In concrete, for his PhD th... with a minimum margin of error. Sequencing of fungal genes The second part of Jos Luis Lavn Trueba's PhD focused on certain fungal genes, known as OXPHOS genes. These, if presenting...