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Fungal diseases represent a major burden to health care globally. As with other pathogenic microbes, there is a limited number of agents suitable for use in treating fungal diseases, and resistance to these agents can develop rapidly. Cryptococcus neoformans is a basidiomycete fungus that causes cryptococcosis worldwide in both immunocompromised and healthy individuals. As a basidiomycete, it diverged from other common pathogenic or model ascomycete fungi more than 500 million years ago. Here, we report C. neoformans genes that are essential for viability as identified through forward and reverse genetic approaches, using an engineered diploid strain and genetic segregation after meiosis. The forward genetic approach generated random insertional mutants in the diploid strain, the induction of meiosis and sporulation, and selection for haploid cells with counterselection of the insertion event. More than 2,500 mutants were analyzed, and transfer DNA (T-DNA) insertions in several genes required for viability were identified. The genes include those encoding the thioredoxin reductase (Trr1), a ribosome assembly factor (Rsa4), an mRNA-capping component (Cet1), and others. For targeted gene replacement, the C. neoformans homologs of 35 genes required for viability in ascomycete fungi were disrupted, meiosis and sporulation were induced, and haploid progeny were evaluated for their ability to grow on selective media. Twenty-one (60%) were found to be required for viability in C. neoformans. These genes are involved in mitochondrial translation, ergosterol biosynthesis, and RNA-related functions. The heterozygous diploid mutants were evaluated for haploinsufficiency on a number of perturbing agents and drugs, revealing phenotypes due to the loss of one copy of an essential gene in C. neoformans. This study expands the knowledge of the essential genes in fungi using a basidiomycete as a model organism. Genes that have no mammalian homologs and are essential in both Cryptococcus and ascomycete human pathogens would be ideal for the development of antifungal drugs with broad-spectrum activity.
Pubmed ID: 25827419 RIS Download
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Database of genetic and molecular biological information about Candida albicans. Contains information about genes and proteins, descriptions and classifications of their biological roles, molecular functions, and subcellular localizations, gene, protein, and chromosome sequence information, tools for analysis and comparison of sequences and links to literature information. Each CGD gene or open reading frame has an individual Locus Page. Genetic loci that are not tied to DNA sequence also have Locus Pages. Provides Gene Ontology, GO, to all its users. Three ontologies that comprise GO (Molecular Function, Cellular Component, and Biological Process) are used by multiple databases to annotate gene products, so that this common vocabulary can be used to compare gene products across species. Development of ontologies is ongoing in order to incorporate new information. Data submissions are welcome.
View all literature mentionsA curated database that provides comprehensive integrated biological information for Saccharomyces cerevisiae along with search and analysis tools to explore these data. SGD allows researchers to discover functional relationships between sequence and gene products in fungi and higher organisms. The SGD also maintains the S. cerevisiae Gene Name Registry, a complete list of all gene names used in S. cerevisiae which includes a set of general guidelines to gene naming. Protein Page provides basic protein information calculated from the predicted sequence and contains links to a variety of secondary structure and tertiary structure resources. Yeast Biochemical Pathways allows users to view and search for biochemical reactions and pathways that occur in S. cerevisiae as well as map expression data onto the biochemical pathways. Literature citations are provided where available.
View all literature mentionsDatabase of genetic and molecular biological information about the filamentous fungi of the genus Aspergillus including information about genes and proteins of Aspergillus nidulans and Aspergillus fumigatus; descriptions and classifications of their biological roles, molecular functions, and subcellular localizations; gene, protein, and chromosome sequence information; tools for analysis and comparison of sequences; and links to literature information; as well as a multispecies comparative genomics browser tool (Sybil) for exploration of orthology and synteny across multiple sequenced Sgenus species. Also available are Gene Ontology (GO) and community resources. Based on the Candida Genome Database, the Aspergillus Genome Database is a resource for genomic sequence data and gene and protein information for Aspergilli. Among its many species, the genus contains an excellent model organism (A. nidulans, or its teleomorph Emericella nidulans), an important pathogen of the immunocompromised (A. fumigatus), an agriculturally important toxin producer (A. flavus), and two species used in industrial processes (A. niger and A. oryzae). Search options allow you to: *Search AspGD database using keywords. *Find chromosomal features that match specific properties or annotations. *Find AspGD web pages using keywords located on the page. *Find information on one gene from many databases. *Search for keywords related to a phenotype (e.g., conidiation), an allele (such as veA1), or an experimental condition (e.g., light). Analysis and Tools allow you to: *Find similarities between a sequence of interest and Aspergillus DNA or protein sequences. *Display and analyze an Aspergillus sequence (or other sequence) in many ways. *Navigate the chromosomes set. View nucleotide and protein sequence. *Find short DNA/protein sequence matches in Aspergillus. *Design sequencing and PCR primers for Aspergillus or other input sequences. *Display the restriction map for a Aspergillus or other input sequence. *Find similarities between a sequence of interest and fungal nucleotide or protein sequences. AspGD welcomes data submissions.
View all literature mentionsHarvester is a Web-based tool that bulk-collects bioinformatic data on human proteins from various databases and prediction servers. It is a meta search engine for gene and protein information. It searches 16 major databases and prediction servers and combines the results on pregenerated HTML pages. In this way Harvester can provide comprehensive gene-protein information from different servers in a convenient and fast manner. As full text meta search engine, similar to Google trade mark, Harvester allows screening of the whole genome proteome for current protein functions and predictions in a few seconds. With Harvester it is now possible to compare and check the quality of different database entries and prediction algorithms on a single page. Sponsors: This work has been supported by the BMBF with grants 01GR0101 and 01KW0013.
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