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Eukaryotic Cell, September 2008, p. 1549-1564, Vol. 7, No. 9
1535-9778/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/EC.00195-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Dissecting Colony Development of Neurospora crassa Using mRNA Profiling and Comparative Genomics Approaches{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Takao Kasuga* and N. Louise Glass

Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-3102

Received 16 June 2008/ Accepted 21 July 2008

Colony development, which includes hyphal extension, branching, anastomosis, and asexual sporulation, is a fundamental aspect of the life cycle of filamentous fungi; genetic mechanisms underlying these phenomena are poorly understood. We conducted transcriptional profiling during colony development of the model filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, using 70-mer oligonucleotide microarrays. Relative mRNA expression levels were determined for six sections of defined age excised from a 27-h-old N. crassa colony. Functional category analysis showed that the expression of genes involved in cell membrane biosynthesis, polar growth, and cellular signaling was enriched at the periphery of the colony. The relative expression of genes involved in protein synthesis and energy production was enriched in the middle section of the colony, while sections of the colony undergoing asexual development (conidiogenesis) were enriched in expression of genes involved in protein/peptide degradation and unclassified proteins. A cross-examination of the N. crassa data set with a published data set of Aspergillus niger revealed shared patterns in the spatiotemporal regulation of gene orthologs during colony development. At present, less than 50% of genes in N. crassa have functional annotation, which imposes the chief limitation on data analysis. Using an evolutionary approach, we observed that the expression of phylogenetically conserved groups of genes was enriched in the middle section of an N. crassa colony whereas expression of genes unique to euascomycete species and of N. crassa orphan genes was enriched at the colony periphery and in the older, conidiating sections of a fungal colony.

* Corresponding author. Present address: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Department of Plant Pathology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616. Phone: (530) 752-4721. Fax: (530) 754-7195. E-mail: tkasuga{at}ucdavis.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 1 August 2008.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://ec.asm.org/.

Eukaryotic Cell, September 2008, p. 1549-1564, Vol. 7, No. 9
1535-9778/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/EC.00195-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

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  • Videira, A., Kasuga, T., Tian, C., Lemos, C., Castro, A., Glass, N. L. (2009). Transcriptional analysis of the response of Neurospora crassa to phytosphingosine reveals links to mitochondrial function. Microbiology 155: 3134-3141 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
  • Honda, S., Selker, E. U. (2009). Tools for Fungal Proteomics: Multifunctional Neurospora Vectors for Gene Replacement, Protein Expression and Protein Purification. Genetics 182: 11-23 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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