Interspecific Electrofusion of Protoplasts betweenAspergillus oryzaeandAspergillus sojae

Direct transfer of whole genomes from bacteria to yeast

“…Cell fusion can result from electrical stimulation 14 or treatment with chemicals such as polyethylene glycol (PEG) 15–17 between cells lacking a cell wall, such as those of Mycoplasma . PEG-mediated fusion has been used to transfer small DNA molecules between bacterial protoplast and yeast spheroplast 18 , but transfer of complete bacterial genomes has never been demonstrated.…”

Fungal protoplasts as tools for studies on protein secretion

“…In many respects protoplasts show metabolic properties similar to those of the mycelium from which they were isolated; and thus a bulk of protoplasts may be considered representative of the cytoplasm of the living mycelium (Isaac, 1985). Protoplasts have thus been used successfUlly in various studies of secretion (Fawcett et al, 1973;Vainstein & Peberdy, 1991b) but also for studies like strain improvement (Ushijima et al, 1991) purification of fungal organelles (Vaguolgyi & Ferenczy, 1991) analysis of wall protein incorporation (Elorza et al, 1994) and studies of antimycotics (Matsuoka et al, 1993). More recently protoplasts were shown to be ideal tools for the study of heat shock response and the cle nova synthesis of stress proteins (Newbury & Peberdy, 1996) The aim of the experiments described in this report was to test the usefulness of protoplasts from A. niger in a study of protein secretion with particular regard to glycosylation.…”