U.S.-Mexico Collaborative Analysis of the Pathways of Control of Dimorphism in Ustilago Maydis

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0203661 GoldThis U.S.-Mexico award will support a collaborative project between Dr. Scott Gold, of the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia, in collaboration with Dr. Jose Ruiz-Herrera of the Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Avanzados (Cinvestav) in Irapuato, Mexico. The researchers aim to study corn smut fungi, a plant disease of cultivated maize, whose close relatives are important pathogens of many grain crops. Smut fungi grow in two morphologies, one form is a budding yeast while the second is typical of most fungi and is made up of long tubular cells of filaments. In corn smut, yeast cells cannot attack the plant but filaments can. These two forms are also common in animal and human fungal pathogens and, again, morphology is often correlated with the ability to cause disease. The researchers have discovered mutations in genes that control the ability of the fungus to alternate between these two forms. The mutations thus far characterized dramatically affect smut disease progression. However, the morphogenetic stimuli used by the two research groups differ, the U.S side studying the signal transduction pathways and the Mexican side studying the effects of pH variations, with both groups observing similar phenotypic results in their studies. The work proposed here will continue to determine the relationship between these morphogenetic pathways by means of various experimental approaches. The information to be derived from this collaboration is likely to increase our understanding of fungal growth and diseases in general. In addition, the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students in the collaboration will provide them with a significant international research and cultural experience.