Title |
Fungal biology in the post-genomic era
|
---|---|
Published in |
Fungal Biology and Biotechnology, October 2014
|
DOI | 10.1186/s40694-014-0007-6 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Claudio Scazzocchio |
Abstract |
In this review I give a personal perspective of how fungal biology has changed since I started my Ph. D. in 1963. At that time we were working in the shadow of the birth of molecular biology as an autonomous and reductionistic discipline, embodied in Crick's central dogma. This first period was methodologically characterised by the fact that we knew what genes were, but we could not access them directly. This radically changed in the 70s-80s when gene cloning, reverse genetics and DNA sequencing become possible. The "next generation" sequencing techniques have produced a further qualitative revolutionary change. The ready access to genomes and transcriptomes of any microbial organism allows old questions to be asked in a radically different way and new questions to be approached. I provide examples chosen somewhat arbitrarily to illustrate some of these changes, from applied aspects to fundamental problems such as the origin of fungal specific genes, the evolutionary history of genes clusters and the realisation of the pervasiveness of horizontal transmission. Finally, I address how the ready availability of genomes and transcriptomes could change the status of model organisms. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of | 1 | 20% |
Spain | 1 | 20% |
Unknown | 3 | 60% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
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Members of the public | 3 | 60% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 20% |
Scientists | 1 | 20% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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Germany | 1 | <1% |
Malaysia | 1 | <1% |
Brazil | 1 | <1% |
Czechia | 1 | <1% |
Canada | 1 | <1% |
Taiwan | 1 | <1% |
Nigeria | 1 | <1% |
Poland | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 111 | 93% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Researcher | 32 | 27% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 25 | 21% |
Student > Bachelor | 12 | 10% |
Professor > Associate Professor | 8 | 7% |
Professor | 7 | 6% |
Other | 24 | 20% |
Unknown | 11 | 9% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
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Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 51 | 43% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 32 | 27% |
Environmental Science | 4 | 3% |
Immunology and Microbiology | 4 | 3% |
Engineering | 3 | 3% |
Other | 7 | 6% |
Unknown | 18 | 15% |