SGD Paper 
Mayrhofer S, et al. (2006) Pheromones and Pheromone Receptors Are Required for Proper Sexual Development in the Homothallic Ascomycete Sordaria macrospora. Genetics 172(3):1521-33
Abstract: The homothallic, filamentous ascomycete Sordaria macrospora is self-fertile and produces sexual fruiting bodies (perithecia) without a mating partner. Even so S. macrospora transcriptionally expresses two pheromone-precursor genes (ppg1 and ppg2) and two pheromone-receptor genes (pre1 and pre2). The proteins encoded by these genes are similar to alpha-factor-like and a-factor-like pheromones and to G-protein-coupled pheromone receptors of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It has been suggested that in S. macrospora, PPG1/PRE2 and PPG2/PRE1 form two cognate pheromone/receptor-pairs. In order to investigate their function, we deleted (Delta) pheromone-precursor genes (Deltappg1, Deltappg2) and receptor genes (Deltapre1, Deltapre2) and generated single- as well as double-knockout strains. No effect on vegetative growth, fruiting-body and ascospore development was seen in the single pheromone-mutant and receptor-mutant strains, respectively. However, double-knockout strains lacking any compatible pheromone/receptor-pair (Deltapre2/Deltappg2, Deltapre1/Deltappg1) and the double-pheromone mutant (Deltappg1/Deltappg2) displayed a drastically reduced number of perithecia and sexual spores, whereas deletion of both receptor genes (Deltapre1/Deltapre2) completely eliminated fruiting-body and ascospore formation. The results suggest that pheromones and pheromone receptors are required for optimal sexual reproduction of the homothallic S. macrospora.
| Status: Published | Type: Journal Article | PubMed ID: 16387884 |
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