Editorial (Thematic Issue: Current Fungal Genomics)

Abstract

Fungi are important to biotechnology including medicine, agriculture and industry fields. Over 100 fungi genome have been sequenced or are being sequenced between 2013/2015 including human and plant pathogens as well as fungi that serve as basic models for molecular and cellular biology. The fungal community working in genomic area is increasing dramatically recently. The obtained data is enabling to understand fungal biology and evolution underlying to fungal impact on different areas. In this way, update the knowledge in the field of fungal genomics in this special issue will have high impact for the general audience of Current Genomics.This issue covers several areas of Fungal genetics analysis and gene function, particularly, functional genomics and deep sequencing, molecular evolution, developmental biology and system modeling.The past decades have been marked by a remarkable progress in the genetic engineering of fungi for biotechnology applications as well as high-throughput techniques to gain deep understanding of the life style of these organisms, starting thus the Systems Biology era of fungi. The article by Gerardo Ruiz Amores and colleagues review and makes a panorama about new directions to drive future research directed to the construction of high-performance, engineered fungal strains working as microbial cell factories. The review describes relevant topics for those with interest on engineering of fungi for biotechnological applications, as well as construction of synthetic promoters and circuits in industrial strains. It should become a reference manuscript for new comers on the field, in special for those interested on engineered fungal strains.Dermatophytes are a group of keratinophylic fungi responsible for superficial mycoses in humans and animals. The mechanism of how this group of fungi pathogenesis is established is very little is known. The molecular mechanisms of heat shock proteins in Dermatophytes and the ability of dermatophytes to establish infection and persist in the host are reviewed by Nilce M. Martinez-Rossi and colleagues. This review is combined with research data and focused in gene expression regulation in the Dermatophytes: Current Advances and Perspectives. The review reports recent advances in understanding the relationship between structural and functions of the HSPs in dermatophytes, including an evaluation of the broad range of highly conserved HSPs that can be identified in the genomes of different species of dermatophytes. In this study, the authors propose interesting model for the regulation of heat shock protein genes (hsp) in dermatophytes under the action of transcriptional regulators Hsf1, Nuc-1, and PacC. The work adds new knowledge to our understanding of the complexity of fungal metabolism.Paracoccidioidomycosis is the most prevalent systemic mycosis in Latin America. The article by Fausto Almeida and colleagues is a research article about gene expression modulation in the pathogenic fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis during cell wall remodeling yeast cel...