Neurospora crassa

Neurospora crassa
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Fungi
Phylum:	Ascomycota
Class:	Ascomycetes
Order:	Sordariales
Family:	Sordariaceae
Genus:	Neurospora
Species:	crassa
Binomial name
Neurospora crassa Shear & B.O. Dodge

Neurospora crassa is a type of red bread mold of the phylum Ascomycota. The genus name, meaning "nerve spore" refers to the characteristic striations on the spores. The first published account of this fungus was from an infestation of French bakeries in 1843. ^[1]

N. crassa is used as a model organism because it is easy to grow and has a haploid life cycle that makes genetic analysis simple since recessive traits will show up in the offspring. Analysis of genetic recombination is facilitated by the ordered arrangement of the products of meiosis in Neurospora ascospores. Its entire genome of seven chromosomes has been sequenced.^[2]

Neurospora was used by Edward Tatum and George Wells Beadle in their experiments for which they won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958. Beadle and Tatum exposed N. crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. They then observed failures in metabolic pathways caused by errors in specific enzymes. This led them to propose the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis that specific genes code for specific proteins. Their hypothesis was later elaborated to enzyme pathways by Norman Horowitz, also working on Neurospora.

In the 24 April 2003 issue of Nature, the genome of N. crassa was reported as completely sequenced.^[3] The genome is about 43 megabases long and includes approximately 10,000 genes. There is a project underway to produce strains containing knockout mutants of every N. crassa gene.^[4]

In its natural environment, N. crassa lives mainly in tropical and sub-tropical regions. It can be found growing on dead plant matter after fires.

Neurospora is actively used in research around the world. It is important in the elucidation of molecular events involved in circadian rhythms, epigenetics and gene silencing, cell polarity, cell fusion, development, as well as many aspects of cell biology and biochemistry.

Strains and other materials for working with Neurospora are available from the Fungal Genetics Stock Center

See also

Fungi portal

• George Beadle
• Norman Horowitz
• Robert Metzenberg
• David Perkins
• Edward Tatum
• Charles Yanofsky

References

• Perkins, D; Davis, R (December 2000), "Evidence for Safety of Neurospora Species for Academic and Commercial Uses", APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY 66 (12):5107-5109, http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/66/12/5107.pdf . PMID 11097875
• Osherov, N; May, GS (30 May 2001), "The molecular mechanisms of conidial germination", FEMS Microbiol Lett 199(2):153-60 . PMID 11377860
• Froehlich, AC; Noh, B; Vierstra, RD, Loros J & Dunlap JC (December 2005), "Genetic and molecular analysis of Phytochromes from the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa", Eukaryot Cell 4(12):2140-52 . PMID 16339731
• Horowitz, NH (April 1991), "Fifty years ago: the Neurospora revolution", Genetics, http://www.genetics.org/cgi/reprint/127/4/631 . PMID 1827628
• Horowitz, NH; Berg, P; Singer, M, Lederberg J, Susman M, Doebley J & Crow JF. (January 2004), "A centennial: George W. Beadle, 1903-1989", Genetics 166(1):1-10, http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/166/1/1 . PMID 15020400
• Kaldi, K; Gonzalez, BH; Brunner, M (23 December 2005), "Transcriptional regulation of the Neurospora circadian clock gene wc-1 affects the phase of circadian output", EMBO Rep . PMID 16374510
• Pittalwala, Iqbal (29 April 2003), "UC Riverside scientists contribute to study that unveils genome sequence of bread mold", Newsroom (University of California, Riverside), http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=573 .
• Ruoff, P (6 December 2005), "The relationship between FRQ-protein stability and temperature compensation in the Neurospora circadian clock", Proc Natl Acad Sci USA . PMID 16314576

1. ^ Davis and Perkins. Neurospora: a model of model microbes. Nature Reviews Genetics (2002) vol. 3 (5) pp. 397-403 [1]
2. ^ Trans-NIH Neurospora Initiative
3. ^ Galagan, J., Calvo, S., Borkovich, K., Selker, E., Read, N.D., FitzHugh,W., Ma, L.-J., Smirnov, S., Purcell, S., Rehman, B., Elkins, T., Engels, R., Wang. S., Nielsen, C.B., Butler, J., Jaffe, D., Endrizzi, M., Qui, D., PIanakiev, P., Bell-Pedersen, D., Nelson, M.A., Werner-Washburne, M., Selitrennikoff, C.P., Kinsey, J.A., Braun, E.L., Zelter, A., Schulte, U., Kothe, G.O., Jedd, G., Mewes. W., Staben, C., Marcotte, E., Greenberg, D., Roy, A., Foley, K., Naylor, J., Stange-Thomann, N., Barrett, R., Gnerre, S., Kamal, M., Kamvysselis, M., Bielke, C., Rudd, S., Frishman, D., Krystofova, S., Rasmussen, C., Metzenberg, R.L., Perkins, D.D., Kroken, S., Catcheside, D., Li, W., Pratt, R.J., Osmani, S.A., DeSouza, C.P.C., Glass, L., Orbach, M.J., Berglund, J.A., Voelker, R., Yarden, O., Plamann, M., Seiler, S., Dunlap, J., Radford, A., Aramayo, R., Natvig, D.O., Alex, L.A., Mannhaupt, G., Ebbole, D.J., Freitag, M., Paulsen, I., Sachs, M.S, Lander, E.S, Nusbaum, C., Birren, B. (2003). The genome sequence of the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa. Nature 422, 859-868.
4. ^ Colot, H.V., Park, G., Turner, G.E., Ringleberg, C., Crew, C.M., Litvinkova, L., Weiss, R.L., Borkovitch, K.A., Dunlap, J.C. (2006) A high-throughput gene knockout procedure for Neurospora reveals functions for multiple transcription factors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 103, 10352-10357.

External links

• Neurospora crassa genome [2]
• "The Neurospora Homepage". Fungal Genetics Stock Center (FGSC). http://www.fgsc.net/Neurospora/. Retrieved December 27, 2005. 
• "The Neurospora Compendium". Fungal Genetics Stock Center (FGSC). http://www.fgsc.net/2000compendium/NewCompend.html. Retrieved December 27, 2005. 
• "The Neurospora-Fungal Genome Initiative". Neurospora Genome Project. http://biology.unm.edu/biology/ngp/WhitePaper.html. Retrieved December 28, 2005. 
• "Trans-NIH Neurospora Initiative". National Institutes of Health (NIH — United States). http://www.nih.gov/science/models/neurospora/. Retrieved December 27, 2005. 
• Neurospora crassa facts, life cycle, tissues, mating types
• [3] Montenegro-Montero A. (2010) "The Almighty Fungi: The Revolutionary Neurospora crassa". A historical view of the many contributions of this organism to molecular biology.