The Prevalence of Killer Yeasts in the Gardens of Fungus-Growing Ants and the Discovery of Novel Killer Toxin named Ksino.

Killer toxins are proteinaceous antifungal molecules produced by yeasts, with activity against a wide range of human and plant pathogenic fungi. Fungus gardens of attine ants in Brazil were surveyed to determine the presence of killer toxin-producing yeasts and to define their antifungal activities and ecological importance. Our results indicate that up to 46% of yeasts isolated from specific fungal gardens can be killer yeasts, with an overall prevalence of 17% across all strains tested.

Novel viruses of the family Partitiviridae discovered in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

It has been 49 years since the last discovery of a new virus family in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A large-scale screen to determine the diversity of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses in S. cerevisiae has identified multiple novel viruses from the family Partitiviridae that have been previously shown to infect plants, fungi, protozoans, and insects.

The Characterization of a Novel Virus Discovered in the Yeast .

Mycoviruses are widely distributed across fungi, including the yeasts of the Saccharomycotina subphylum. This manuscript reports the first double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) virus isolated from This novel virus has been named Pichia membranifaciens virus L-A (PmV-L-A) and is a member of the . PmV-L-A is 4579 bp in length, with RNA secondary structures similar to the packaging, replication, and frameshift signals of totiviruses that infect Saccharomycotina yeasts.