Positive selection in cytochrome P450 genes is associated with gonad phenotype and mating strategy in social bees.

The honey bee, Apis mellifera differs from all other social bees in its gonad phenotype and mating strategy. Honey bee queens and drones have tremendously enlarged gonads, and virgin queens mate with several males. In contrast, in all the other bees, the male and female gonads are small, and the females mate with only one or very few males, thus, suggesting an evolutionary and developmental link between gonad phenotype and mating strategy.

Mining novel -regulatory elements from the emergent host using transcriptomic data.

The demand for robust microbial cell factories that produce valuable biomaterials while resisting stresses imposed by current bioprocesses is rapidly growing. is an emerging host that presents desirable features for bioproduction, since it can grow in a wide range of substrates and tolerate a variety of toxic compounds. To explore suitability for application as a cell factory in biorefineries, we sought to understand the transcriptional responses of this yeast when growing under experimental settings that simulated those used in biofuels-related industries.

Chromatin profiling reveals heterogeneity in clinical isolates of the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus.

Invasive Pulmonary Aspergillosis, which is caused by the filamentous fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, is a life-threatening infection for immunosuppressed patients. Chromatin structure regulation is important for genome stability maintenance and has the potential to drive genome rearrangements and affect virulence and pathogenesis of pathogens. Here, we performed the first A.

Recent advances in plasmid-based tools for establishing novel microbial chassis.

A key challenge for domesticating alternative cultivable microorganisms with biotechnological potential lies in the development of innovative technologies. Within this framework, a myriad of genetic tools has flourished, allowing the design and manipulation of complex synthetic circuits and genomes to become the general rule in many laboratories rather than the exception. More recently, with the development of novel technologies such as DNA automated synthesis/sequencing and powerful computational tools, molecular biology has entered the synthetic biology era.

Synthetic and minimalist vectors for Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of fungi.

We present a collection of minimalist binary vectors for transformation through ATMT applicable to several fungi species. pLUO plasmid binary vectors consist of a reporter module containing fluorescent proteins, mCherry or eGFP, flanked by a multiple cloning site and a transcription terminator site. They also present a synthetic gene allowing resistance to Hygromicin B flanked by alternate promoters, one for yeast and another for filamentous fungi.

A toolset of constitutive promoters for metabolic engineering of Rhodosporidium toruloides.

Background: Rhodosporidium toruloides is a promising host for the production of bioproducts from lignocellulosic biomass. A key prerequisite for efficient pathway engineering is the availability of robust genetic tools and resources. However, there is a lack of characterized promoters to drive expression of heterologous genes for strain engineering in R.

A Novel Cys2His2 Zinc Finger Homolog of AZF1 Modulates Holocellulase Expression in .

Filamentous fungi are remarkable producers of enzymes dedicated to the degradation of sugar polymers found in the plant cell wall. Here, we integrated transcriptomic data to identify novel transcription factors (TFs) related to the control of gene expression of lignocellulosic hydrolases in and Using various sets of differentially expressed genes, we identified some putative -regulatory elements that were related to known binding sites for TFs. Comparative genomics allowed the identification of six transcriptional factors in filamentous fungi that have corresponding homologs.

Systems and Synthetic Biology Approaches to Engineer Fungi for Fine Chemical Production.

Since the advent of systems and synthetic biology, many studies have sought to harness microbes as cell factories through genetic and metabolic engineering approaches. Yeast and filamentous fungi have been successfully harnessed to produce fine and high value-added chemical products. In this review, we present some of the most promising advances from recent years in the use of fungi for this purpose, focusing on the manipulation of fungal strains using systems and synthetic biology tools to improve metabolic flow and the flow of secondary metabolites by pathway redesign.

Validation of reference genes in Penicillium echinulatum to enable gene expression study using real-time quantitative RT-PCR.

Quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) is a methodology that facilitates the quantification of mRNA expression in a given sample. Analysis of relative gene expression by qRT-PCR requires normalization of the data using a reference gene that is expressed at a similar level in all evaluated conditions. Determining an internal control gene is essential for gene expression studies.