Publications by authors named "Jenifer Johnson"

Schizophyllum commune is a mushroom-forming fungus notable for its distinctive fruiting bodies with split gills. It is used as a model organism to study mushroom development, lignocellulose degradation and mating type loci. It is a hypervariable species with considerable genetic and phenotypic diversity between the strains.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The jasmonic acid (JA) signalling pathway is crucial for establishing ectomycorrhizal (ECM) symbiosis, with the effector MiSSP7 playing a key role by stabilizing the JA corepressor JAZ6, and inhibiting MYC2 transcription factors.
  • Research reveals that overexpressing MYC2s in poplar trees decreases fungal colonization, while silencing them increases it, indicating a complex relationship between plant immunity and fungal growth.
  • The identification of terpene synthase genes regulated by MYC2s suggests that root monoterpenes can inhibit fungal growth, highlighting the significance of MYC2s and terpenes in promoting mutualistic symbiosis in poplars
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Gene functional descriptions offer a crucial line of evidence for candidate genes underlying trait variation. Conversely, plant responses to environmental cues represent important resources to decipher gene function and subsequently provide molecular targets for plant improvement through gene editing. However, biological roles of large proportions of genes across the plant phylogeny are poorly annotated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The authors hypothesize that standardized telehealth (TH) scheduling processes will improve TH utilization without increasing adverse events. Fifty visits preimplementation and 67 visits postimplementation were audited from June 2021 to January 2022. Both leadership and frontline stakeholders were engaged to identify current workflows and potential interventions targeting outpatient elective procedures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ectomycorrhizas are an intrinsic component of tree nutrition and responses to environmental variations. How epigenetic mechanisms might regulate these mutualistic interactions is unknown. By manipulating the level of expression of the chromatin remodeler DECREASE IN DNA METHYLATION 1 (DDM1) and two demethylases DEMETER-LIKE (DML) in Populus tremula × Populus alba lines, we examined how host DNA methylation modulates multiple parameters of the responses to root colonization with the mutualistic fungus Laccaria bicolor.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ectomycorrhizal (EcM) fungi play a crucial role in the mineral nitrogen (N) nutrition of their host trees. While it has been proposed that several EcM species also mobilize organic N, studies reporting the EcM ability to degrade N-containing polymers, such as chitin, remain scarce. Here, we assessed the capacity of a representative collection of 16 EcM species to acquire N from N-chitin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most of the described species in kingdom Fungi are contained in two phyla, the Ascomycota and the Basidiomycota (subkingdom Dikarya). As a result, our understanding of the biology of the kingdom is heavily influenced by traits observed in Dikarya, such as aerial spore dispersal and life cycles dominated by mitosis of haploid nuclei. We now appreciate that Fungi comprises numerous phylum-level lineages in addition to those of Dikarya, but the phylogeny and genetic characteristics of most of these lineages are poorly understood due to limited genome sampling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Medial elbow laxity develops in throwing athletes due to valgus forces. Medial elbow instability in professional, collegiate, and high school athletes is well documented; however, the medial elbow of young throwing athletes has received less attention. This study investigated the medial elbow and common flexor tendon during applied elbow valgus stress of youth baseball players.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Little is known at the transcriptional level about microbial eukaryotic adaptations to short-term salinity change. Arctic microalgae are exposed to low salinity due to sea-ice melt and higher salinity with brine channel formation during freeze-up. Here, we investigate the transcriptional response of an ice-associated microalgae over salinities from 45 to 8.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The ectomycorrhizal (ECM) symbiosis has independently evolved from diverse types of saprotrophic ancestors. In this study, we seek to identify genomic signatures of the transition to the ECM habit within the hyperdiverse Russulaceae. We present comparative analyses of the genomic architecture and the total and secreted gene repertoires of 18 species across the order Russulales, of which 13 are newly sequenced, including a representative of a saprotrophic member of Russulaceae, Gloeopeniophorella convolvens.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We aimed to identify genomic traits of transitions to ectomycorrhizal ecology within the Boletales by comparing the genomes of 21 symbiotrophic species with their saprotrophic brown-rot relatives. Gene duplication rate is constant along the backbone of Boletales phylogeny with large loss events in several lineages, while gene family expansion sharply increased in the late Miocene, mostly in the Boletaceae. Ectomycorrhizal Boletales have a reduced set of plant cell-wall-degrading enzymes (PCWDEs) compared with their brown-rot relatives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Wild and weedy relatives of domesticated crops harbor genetic variants that can advance agricultural biotechnology. Here we provide a genome resource for the wild plant green millet (Setaria viridis), a model species for studies of C grasses, and use the resource to probe domestication genes in the close crop relative foxtail millet (Setaria italica). We produced a platinum-quality genome assembly of S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coniochaeta species are versatile ascomycetes that have great capacity to deconstruct lignocellulose. Here, we explore the transcriptome of Coniochaeta sp. strain 2T2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The accumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is concerning due to their cancer-causing potential and resistance to removal, while fungi could potentially degrade these pollutants.
  • In this study, Dentipellis sp. KUC8613, a fungal strain, was found to efficiently eliminate over 90% of PAHs in just 10 days, utilizing mainly non-ligninolytic enzymes instead of the usual ones associated with PAH breakdown.
  • The research revealed that specific PAHs like phenanthrene triggered significant gene responses in the fungus, enhancing its ability to manage toxic effects and boost energy production, providing a basis for future environmental cleanup strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The evolution of complex multicellularity has been one of the major transitions in the history of life. In contrast to simple multicellular aggregates of cells, it has evolved only in a handful of lineages, including animals, embryophytes, red and brown algae, and fungi. Despite being a key step toward the evolution of complex organisms, the evolutionary origins and the genetic underpinnings of complex multicellularity are incompletely known.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dark septate endophytes (DSE) are a form-group of root endophytic fungi with elusive functions. Here, the genomes of two common DSE of semiarid areas, Cadophora sp. and Periconia macrospinosa were sequenced and analyzed with another 32 ascomycetes of different lifestyles.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In Fig. 5 of the version of this Article originally published, the final number on the x axes of each panel was incorrectly written as 1.5; it should have read 7.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fixed chromosomal inversions can reduce gene flow and promote speciation in two ways: by suppressing recombination and by carrying locally favoured alleles at multiple loci. However, it is unknown whether favoured mutations slowly accumulate on older inversions or if young inversions spread because they capture pre-existing adaptive quantitative trait loci (QTLs). By genetic mapping, chromosome painting and genome sequencing, we have identified a major inversion controlling ecologically important traits in Boechera stricta.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Pectin is an abundant component in many fruit and vegetable wastes and could therefore be an excellent resource for biorefinery, but is currently underutilized. Fungal pectinases already play a crucial role for industrial purposes, such as for foodstuff processing. However, the regulation of pectinase gene expression is still poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Divergence of breeding system plays an important role in fungal speciation. Ectomycorrhizal fungi, however, pose a challenge for the study of reproductive biology because most cannot be mated under laboratory conditions. To overcome this barrier, we sequenced the draft genomes of the ectomycorrhizal sister species Smith and Zeller and Smith and Zeller (Basidiomycota, Boletales)-the first genomes available for Basidiomycota truffles-and characterized gene content and organization surrounding their mating type loci.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Receptor-like kinases (RLKs) belong to a large protein family with over 600 members in Arabidopsis and over 1000 in rice. Among RLKs, the lectin receptor-like kinases (LecRLKs) possess a characteristic extracellular carbohydrate-binding lectin domain and play important roles in plant development and innate immunity. There are 75 and 173 LecRLKs in Arabidopsis and rice, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The ecosystem roles of fungi have been extensively studied by targeting one organism and/or biological process at a time, but the full metabolic potential of fungi has rarely been captured in an environmental context. We hypothesized that fungal genome sequences could be assembled directly from the environment using metagenomics and that transcriptomics and proteomics could simultaneously reveal metabolic differentiation across habitats. We reconstructed the near-complete 27 Mbp genome of a filamentous fungus, Acidomyces richmondensis, and evaluated transcript and protein expression in floating and streamer biofilms from an acid mine drainage (AMD) system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Climatic adaptation is an example of a genotype-by-environment interaction (G×E) of fitness. Selection upon gene expression regulatory variation can contribute to adaptive phenotypic diversity; however, surprisingly few studies have examined how genome-wide patterns of gene expression G×E are manifested in response to environmental stress and other selective agents that cause climatic adaptation. Here, we characterize drought-responsive expression divergence between upland (drought-adapted) and lowland (mesic) ecotypes of the perennial C4 grass,Panicum hallii, in natural field conditions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A simple, rapid and sensitive LC-MS/MS bioanalytical method has been developed to simultaneously quantify Camptosar (CPT-11) and its active metabolite, SN-38, in mouse plasma and tissues. A single step protein precipitation with acetonitrile in 96-well plates was used for sample preparation. Camptothecin (CPT) was used as the internal standard.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF