MYCOLab Ai Logo - gold and army green

The gene for a lectin-like protein is transcriptionally activated during sexual development, but is not essential for fruiting body formation in the filamentous fungus Sordaria macrospora

Summary

This research investigated the role of a gene called tap1 in the sexual reproduction of a fungus. While the gene becomes much more active during fungal reproduction, surprisingly removing it completely had no effect on the fungus’s ability to reproduce and develop normally. This suggests the fungus has backup systems that can compensate when tap1 is missing. Impacts on everyday life: – Helps us understand how organisms can remain healthy even when specific genes are lost or damaged – Advances our knowledge of fungal reproduction, which is important for agriculture and medicine – Demonstrates the complexity of biological systems and their built-in redundancy – Could lead to better methods for controlling harmful fungi or improving beneficial ones

Background

The filamentous fungus Sordaria macrospora forms complex three-dimensional fruiting bodies called perithecia that protect developing ascospores and ensure proper discharge. Previous microarray analyses identified several genes downregulated in sterile mutants compared to wild type, including tap1 (transcript associated with perithecial development), a gene encoding a putative lectin homolog.

Objective

To determine whether tap1 is involved in fruiting body development in S. macrospora by analyzing its expression patterns and characterizing a tap1 knockout strain.

Results

tap1 transcript levels were upregulated nearly 60-fold during sexual development compared to vegetative growth. The genomic region containing tap1 showed synteny with Neurospora crassa. However, the tap1 knockout strain displayed no phenotypic differences in vegetative growth or sexual development compared to wild type. Double mutants carrying the Δtap1 allele in various developmental mutant backgrounds were phenotypically similar to the corresponding developmental mutant strains.

Conclusion

Although tap1 transcript is strongly upregulated during sexual development in S. macrospora, analysis of the tap1 knockout strain demonstrates that tap1 is not essential for fruiting body formation in this fungus.
  • Published in:BMC Microbiology,
  • Study Type:Gene Function Analysis,
  • Source: 10.1186/1471-2180-5-64
Scroll to Top