Journal article
Phycomyces MADB interacts with MADA to form the primary photoreceptor complex for fungal phototropism
C Sanz, J Rodríguez-Romero, A Idnurm, JM Christie, J Heitman, LM Corrochano, AP Eslava
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | NATL ACAD SCIENCES | Published : 2009
Abstract
The fungus Phycomyces blakesleeanus reacts to environmental signals, including light, gravity, touch, and the presence of nearby objects, by changing the speed and direction of growth of its fruiting body (sporangiophore). Phototropism, growth toward light, shares many features in fungi and plants but the molecular mechanisms remain to be fully elucidated. Phycomyces mutants with altered phototropism were isolated ≈40 years ago and found to have mutations in the mad genes. All of the responses to light in Phycomyces require the products of the madA and madB genes. We showed that madA encodes a protein similar to the Neurospora blue-light photoreceptor, zinc-finger protein WC-1. We show here ..
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Awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank E. Cerda-Olmedo for scientific advice, D. Perez del Camino for technical help, and G. Gutierrez for phylogenies. This work was supported by European funds (ERDF), Spanish Grants BIO2006-14897, AGL2005-08081, P06-CVI-01650 (J. Andalucia), and GR64 (to J. Castilla-Leon); and National Institutes of Health Grants AI039115 and AI073917. J.R.R. held an European Molecular Biology Organization short-term fellowship in the laboratory of J.M.C. We acknowledge access to the Phycomyces genome sequence (US Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institute).