IMA Fungus 2(1): 81-86, doi: 10.5598/imafungus.2011.02.01.11
Post-genomic approaches to understanding interactions between fungi and their environment
Ronald P. De Vries‡, Isabelle Benoit§, Gunther Doehlemann|, Tetsuo Kobayashi¶, Jon K. Magnuson#, Ellen A. Panisko#, Scott E. Baker#, Marc-Henri Lebrun¤‡ CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Fungal Physiology, Utrecht§ Utrecht University, Microbiology & Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation, Utrecht| MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology, Department of Organismic Interactions, Marburg, Germany¶ Nagoya University, Department of Biological Mechanisms and Functions, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya, Japan# Fungal Biotechnology Team, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland¤ UR1290 INRABIOGER-CPP, Thiverval-Grignon, France
© Ronald De Vries, Isabelle Benoit, Gunther Doehlemann, Tetsuo Kobayashi, Jon Magnuson, Ellen Panisko, Scott Baker, Marc-Henri Lebrun. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes, provided that the article is not altered or modified and the original author and source are credited. Citation:
De Vries RP, Benoit I, Doehlemann G, Kobayashi T, Magnuson JK, Panisko EA, Baker SE, Lebrun M-H (2011) Post-genomic approaches to understanding interactions between fungi and their environment. IMA Fungus 2(1): 81-86. https://doi.org/10.5598/imafungus.2011.02.01.11 |  |
Abstract
Fungi inhabit every natural and anthropogenic environment on Earth. They have highly varied life-styles including saprobes (using only dead biomass as a nutrient source), pathogens (feeding on living biomass), and symbionts (co-existing with other organisms). These distinctions are not absolute as many species employ several life styles (e.g. saprobe and opportunistic pathogen, saprobe and mycorrhiza). To efficiently survive in these different and often changing environments, fungi need to be able to modify their physiology and in some cases will even modify their local environment. Understanding the interaction between fungi and their environments has been a topic of study for many decades. However, recently these studies have reached a new dimension. The availability of fungal genomes and development of postgenomic technologies for fungi, such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, have enabled more detailed studies into this topic resulting in new insights. Based on a Special Interest Group session held during IMC9, this paper provides examples of the recent advances in using (post-)genomic approaches to better understand fungal interactions with their environments.
Keywords
(post-)genomics, Aspergillus oryzae, Aspergillus niger, Phycomyces blakesleeanus, Thielavia terrestris, Ustilago maydis