Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) represent an ecologically important and evolutionarily intriguing group of symbionts of land plants, currently thought to have propagated clonally for over 500 Myr. AMF produce multinucleate spores and may exchange nuclei through anastomosis, but meiosis has never been observed in this group. A provocative alternative for their successful and long asexual evolutionary history is that these organisms may have cryptic sex, allowing them to recombine alleles and…
August 2011 archive
Aug 25
Graduate Student Position in Algal Evolutionary Genomics
Biology Department, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada One graduate student (Ph.D.) position is available in the laboratory of Dr. Adrian Reyes-Prieto in the Biology Department of the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton. Dr Reyes-Prieto is seeking an enthusiastic graduate student interested in genomic sciences, evolutionary biology and microbial diversity. The candidate should have …
Aug 18
Halary et al. accepted – On meiosis in mycorrhizal fungi
Just accepted in Genome Biology and Evolution: “Conserved meiotic machinery in Glomus spp., a putatively ancient asexual fungal lineage” by Sebastien Halary, Shehre-Banoo Malik, Levannia Lildhar, Claudio H. Slamovits, Mohamed Hijri and Nicolas Corradi.
Aug 16
Phylogenetic position of Lophomonas striata Bütschli (Parabasalia) from the hindgut of the cockroach Periplaneta americana
Lophomonas striata is a multiflagellate parabasalid commensal in the hindgut of the omnivorous cockroaches Blatta orientalis and Periplaneta americana. Its closest relatives were traditionally thought to include similar multiflagellate parabasalids with a single flagellar area that degenerates during mitosis, such as Joenia and Kofoidia. However, molecular phylogenetic analyses have shown that “lophomonads” are not monophyletic. We have determined the SSU rRNA sequence of L. striata and we find…
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