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

0203661 GoldThis美国-墨西哥奖将支持格鲁吉亚雅典的格鲁吉亚大学的Scott Gold博士与墨西哥伊拉普阿托的Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Avanzados（Cinvestav）的Jose Ruiz-Herrera博士合作开展的一个合作项目。 研究人员的目标是研究玉米黑穗病真菌，这是一种种植玉米的植物疾病，其近亲是许多粮食作物的重要病原体。 黑穗病真菌以两种形态生长，一种是芽殖酵母，而第二种是大多数真菌的典型形态，由长管状细胞的细丝组成。在玉米黑穗病中，酵母细胞不能攻击植物，但细丝可以。 这两种形式在动物和人类真菌病原体中也很常见，并且再次，形态学通常与引起疾病的能力相关。研究人员发现了控制真菌在这两种形式之间交替的能力的基因突变。迄今为止的突变特征显着影响黑穗病的进展。然而，两个研究小组使用的形态发生刺激不同，美国方面研究信号转导途径，墨西哥方面研究pH变化的影响，两组在研究中观察到相似的表型结果。这里提出的工作将继续通过各种实验方法来确定这些形态发生途径之间的关系。从这次合作中获得的信息可能会增加我们对真菌生长和疾病的理解。此外，本科生和研究生参与合作将为他们提供重要的国际研究和文化经验。

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.