The 9th meeting of this symposium will be held this year in Slovenia during June 25-27, and already has many interesting speakers confirmed 🙂
Abstract deadline closes 30th April!
For more details please see:
Anaerobic fungi are a valuable direct fed microbial for ruminants
Direct fed microbials (essentially similar to probiotics but the term is only used for “live, naturally occurring microbes”) are an approach to beneficially modify the gut ecosystem to optimise animal health and/or productivity. A recent review covers this topic from the perspective of ruminants, and highlights the significant value and future opportunities for anaerobic fungi as a live microbial feed supplement.
Potential for plant feed additives to promote ruminal anaerobic fungi
What’s better for ruminants than having ruminal anaerobic fungi? Having even MORE ruminal anaerobic fungi! A recently published study reports that certain plants can promote anaerobic fungal growth/activity, and may have potential as a future feed additive.
Hungate1000 Rumen Microbial Genomes Workshop
There will be a Hungate1000 rumen microbial genomes workshop taking place at the 2015 Congress on Gastrointestinal Function Conference, April 13-15, Chicago, USA.
The workshop will take place on the morning of April 13th 2015 and will be a great session where the progress on genome sequencing of the rumen microbiome will be presented as well hearing from several invited speakers who will be discussing strategies and applications for using this type of resource. More details can be found at: http://congressgastrofunction.org/program.asp
Life through a lens – Buwchfawomyces eastonii
Click here to see a video clip of a Buwchfawomyces eastonii thallus attached to a particle of wheatstraw.
The wheat straw particle can be seen to be colonised by the extensive rhizoid which has a mature sporangium (round bulbous structure) emerging from it. The sporangium will eventually full up with zoospores and release them to colonise fresh plant material.
Thanks Tony Callaghan for providing us with this video clip!
A new anaerobic fungal genus: Buwchfawromyces
A paper describing the characterisation of a brand new anaerobic fungal genus and associated species has just been published – that makes seven genera now!
“Buwchfawromyces eastonii gen. nov., sp. nov.: a new anaerobic fungus (Neocallimastigomycota) isolated from buffalo faeces”
Colin Orpin
I had a lovely conversation with Colin Orpin the other evening – he was delighted to hear about our network and that anaerobic fungal research is still alive and kicking!
For those of you not familiar with the name, Colin Orpin is the researcher who conducted much of the ground breaking work in the 1960s/70s which led to the acceptance of the existence of anaerobic fungi despite the widely accepted dogma of the time that fungi needed oxygen.
Silage inoculant and a termite gut isolate??
A recently published study has reported on the successful use of anaerobic fungi as a silage inoculant – but perhaps the most interesting thing (for me at least) is that one of the isolates used in the study was isolated from the termite gut! We may have to rethink our understanding of host range….
Website now live and the word is out!
Since the first phase of our website going live last week (29th January) I am delighted to announce that news of our network has now reached 26 different countries (only 216 more to go!). We also have a huge following in India (thanks to Sumit Singh Dagar and Anil Puniya – they are great ambassadors!).
Please keep spreading the word about the network, and of course anaerobic fungi!
1000 fungal genomes….
The ‘1000 Fungal Genomes Project’ is a fabulous initiative to develop genomic resources for every family in the fungal kingdom – including of course anaerobic fungi :)To learn more about the project, and to see what anaerobic fungal projects/resources are currently listed, please check out the JGI project website: http://genome.jgi.doe.gov/programs/fungi/1000fungalgenomes.jsf