Neurospora crassa is a filamentous fungus, i.e. growing as hyphae rather than forming unicellular yeast cells. Filamentous fungi are important in natural environments as degraders of plant and animal biomass, as pathogens of plants and animals, and as producers of natural products that are used as pharmaceuticals. The genus Neurospora holds a central position in the history of genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology, as one of the earliest convenient model organisms that helped to decipher the gene-to-protein relationships of metabolism and gene regulation. Ongoing studies on light regulation, the circadian clock, chromatin and epigenetics, gene regulation, and metabolism continue to yield insights into general eukaryotic biology.
Neurospora crassa strain FGSC8790, also called “Homestead” and abbreviated “D30”, is a wild-type strain collected in Florida, USA, and has become an important strain for population genetics (1, 2) and quantitative trait analyses (QTLs). The strain is distantly related to the N. crassa reference strain, FGSC 2489 74-OR23-1VA (aka “74A”), whose updated genome sequence is available. A first high-quality draft of the FGSC2489 genome was sequenced at the Broad institute of MIT and released in 2003, and it is still available at https://mycocosm.jgi.doe.gov/Neucr2.
References:
- Ellison CE, Hall C, Kowbel D, Welch J, Brem RB, Glass NL, Taylor JW Population genomics and local adaptation in wild isolates of a model microbial eukaryote. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Feb 15;108(7):2831-6. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1014971108. Epub 2011 Jan 31
- Gladieux P, De Bellis F, Hann-Soden C, Svedberg J, Johannesson H, Taylor JW. Neurospora from Natural Populations: Population Genomics Insights into the Life History of a Model Microbial Eukaryote. Methods Mol Biol. 2020;2090:313-336. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0199-0_13.
