Blog
2020
Look out for these new Genera in the Mortierellaceae!
There are some notable changes in taxonomy of Mortierellaceae, following the publication of ‘Resolving the Mortierellaceae phylogeny through synthesis of multi-gene phylogenetics and phylogenomics’ in _Fungal Diversity_1. This paper, led by recent PhD graduate Natalie Vandepol from Gregory Bonito’s lab at Michigan State University, is the result of a multi-lab ZyGoLife collaboration including Jason Stajich at University of California, Riverside and Kerry O’Donnell from the USDA ARS in Peoria,...
2019
Several recent publications out now from the Zygolife team. Good work all on the improved phylogenetic resolution of clades within the Zoopagomycota Phylum and Zoopagomycotina sub-phylum. Davis WJ, Amses KR, Benny GL, Carter-House D, Chang Y, Grigoriev I, Smith ME, Spatafora JW, Stajich JE, James TY. Genome-scale phylogenetics reveals a monophyletic Zoopagales (Zoopagomycota, Fungi). Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2019; 133:152-163. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2019.01.006 Benny GL, Smith ME. ...
2018
Zygolife visitors to UC Riverside
In early April the Stajich lab at UC Riverside hosted several visitors from our ZyGoLife collaborative team in sunny California. The week started with a visit from Nicole a graduate student at Univ of Florida who came to sample soils and dung on the hunt for elusive mycoparasites in the Zoopagomycotina lineage. Her graduate training with Prof Matthew Smith with input from Dr Gerald Benny is helping her become an expert in mycoparasites like Syncephalis and Piptocephalis. One colle...
2017
ZyGoLabs: Zygomycete Fungi in Teaching and Research - July 15, 2017 This year at the annual Mycological Society of America meeting in Athens, GA, the ZyGoLife research team hosted the first ZyGoLabs workshop. It was an all day affair that focused on hands-on isolation and observation laboratories that can be implemented in teaching and research. We had a total of 25 participants including students, postdocs and professors, as well as those from industry and the general public. The worksh...
Jason Stajich Plenary Lecture at FGC2017
Jason presents on genomic evolution and the 1KFG project.
Great ZyGoLife Workshop hosted by Robby Roberson at Arizona State. We focused on subcellular data collection and linking with genomic data.
New Zygo genomes - March 2017 edition
The zygo-elves and the JGI have been hard at work at end of 2016 and early 2017 growing and preparing samples for sequencing. Following sequencing, assembly and annotation work at JGI the following are now available genomes - most were performed with PacBio so there are 25-400 contigs for most of these. Good work Spatafora (Ying Chang) and Stajich labs (Derreck Carterhouse and Jericho Ortanez) with support from Matt Smith’s lab at U Florida esp the work of Nicole Reynolds and Gerald Benny wh...
2016
ZyGoLife 2016 ZyGoLife 2016 Workshop was an all day affair. It was hosted by JGI on August the 7th and included 35 participants from 12 institutions. Each lab presented a 20-minute update on research directly related to the ZyGoLife project followed by 10 minutes of discussion. At the end of the meeting there was a 1.5 hour discussion on goals for the second year of the project. Particular discussion topics included Tier II sampling of genomes for our JGI CSP, prioritization of analyses and ...
Jericho Ortanez visits the Spatafora lab.
Jericho Ortanez from Jason Stajich’s lab at UC Riverside is visiting the Spatafora lab this week. Jericho is an undergraduate in Biology and is working on the ZyGoLife project. We have funding as part of the ZyGoLife project for students to visit different ZyGoLife labs, learn new techniques, and build their professional network. Jericho is here this week learning our DNA and RNA extraction protocols. He is working with Ying Chang, Jeff Beard and Nick Spatafora. Great visit and we have r...
Two new zygomycete genomes were released this week at JGI: Mucor heterogamus NRRL 1489 v1. and Mycotypha africana NRRL 2978 v1.0. Both of these genomes were sequenced as part of the ZyGoLife project and the associated CSP on early diverging fungi. We are very excited about the pace of zygomycete genome sequencing and the ability to crack open the black box of zygomycete evolution.
Zygo genomes update Feb-June 2016
A number of genomes have been completed recently and made public as part of our collaboration with Joint Genome Institute (JGI). These data are unpublished and are being included in phylogenomic analyses by the ZyGoLife research consortium. We are particularly interested in resolving relationships among the zygomycete fungi and using a phylogenetic framework to test hypotheses of the evolution of fungi as they transitioned onto land and adopted nutritional modes reliant on plants and plant-ba...
A few genomes from our project were made public as part of the JGI collaboration in the past few months. Here are two recent releases of genomes from the EKZ clade (Entomophthoromycotina, Kickxellomycotina, Zoopagomycotina) and we expect several more to be public in the coming month. A PacBio based assembly of the Entomophthoromycotina fungus Basidiobolus meristosporus CBS 931.73. These fungi are often isolated from dung of frogs or lizards and have hyphal growth forms but the phylogeneti...
2015
Successfully growing a mycoparasite in pure culture!
Species of Syncephalis (Zoopagales) are generally considered to be obligate, haustorial, biotrophic parasites of other zygomycetous fungi (Mortierellomycotina and Mucoromycotina) in nature. They can be commonly isolated from environmental soil and dung substrates and maintained in dual cultures in the lab. However, Ellis (1966) developed a medium capable of growing several Syncephalis species in pure culture without their host fungi. The secret ingredient is beef liver. Some species of Synce...
First Zygoblitz and ZyGoLife project meeting
The ZyGoLife team had our first all hands project meeting hosted by Co-PI Matthew Smith in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. We gathered for three days to organize several of the data collection themes and design some of the experiments we are planning. It was a great ‘kick off’ to our project where we got to interact with each other and through video chats with teams members who could not attend. The project has several foci intended to captur...
2014
Zygomycetes comprise ancient lineages of Fungi that include plant symbionts, animal and human pathogens, and decomposers of a wide variety of organic compounds. Zygomycetes are thought to be among the first terrestrial organisms and symbiotic associations with zygomycetes apparently facilitated the origin of land plants. They represent one of the earliest origins of multicellularity and the filamentous body plan and polar cell growth that characterize most species of fungi. Zygomycete fungi a...