Abstract
We have developed a cytoduction assay to measure cell fusion quantitatively in the basidiomycete corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis. This assay employs a mutation conferring resistance to oligomycin that exhibits non-Mendelian inheritance and presumably affects the mitochondrial genome. After auxotrophic olir cells are mixed with prototrophic olis cells, prototrophic olir cells can be detected at a significant frequency after several hours of incubation, reaching a maximum of 10% of the total prototrophs in the mixture after 18 h. We demonstrate that this cell fusion event occurs only if the mating partners have different alleles of the a mating-type locus and is not influenced by the b locus. These studies support the view that the a locus but not the b locus controls establishment of the filamentous, pathogenic state.
Full text
PDF
Images in this article
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Banuett F., Herskowitz I. Different a alleles of Ustilago maydis are necessary for maintenance of filamentous growth but not for meiosis. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Aug;86(15):5878–5882. doi: 10.1073/pnas.86.15.5878. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Bölker M., Urban M., Kahmann R. The a mating type locus of U. maydis specifies cell signaling components. Cell. 1992 Feb 7;68(3):441–450. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(92)90182-c. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Conde J., Fink G. R. A mutant of Saccharomyces cerevisiae defective for nuclear fusion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1976 Oct;73(10):3651–3655. doi: 10.1073/pnas.73.10.3651. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- LARDY H. A., JOHNSON D., McMURRAY W. C. Antibiotics as tools for metabolic studies. I. A survey of toxic antibiotics in respiratory, phosphorylative and glycolytic systems. Arch Biochem Biophys. 1958 Dec;78(2):587–597. doi: 10.1016/0003-9861(58)90383-7. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Pomper S., Burkholder P. R. Studies on the Biochemical Genetics of Yeast. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1949 Aug;35(8):456–464. doi: 10.1073/pnas.35.8.456. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Puhalla J. E. The formation of diploids of Ustilago maydis on agar medium. Phytopathology. 1969 Nov;59(11):1771–1772. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]