The gold-standard genome of <i>Aspergillus niger</i> NRRL 3 enables a detailed view of the diversity of sugar catabolism in fungi

The fungal kingdom is too large to be discovered exclusively by classical genetics. The access to omics data opens a new opportunity to study the diversity within the fungal kingdom and how adaptation to new environments shapes fungal metabolism. Genomes are the foundation of modern science but their quality is crucial when analysing omics data. In this study, we demonstrate how one gold-standard genome can improve functional prediction across closely related species to be able to identify key enzymes, reactions and pathways with the focus on primary carbon metabolism.Based on this approach we identified alternative genes encoding various steps of the different sugar catabolic pathways, and as such provided leads for functional studies into this topic. We also revealed significant diversity with respect to genome content, although this did not always correlate to the ability of the species to use the corresponding sugar as a carbon source. Key words: Aspergillus, Genomic diversity, Gold standard genome, Sugar catabolis

MOVPE grown quantum cascade lasers : single mode performance and structural quality

We report single longitudinal mode, T> 300K operation of MOVPE-grown InGaAs/ AlInAs DFB quantum cascade lasers. Structural investigation indicates the epitaxial quality of the active region to be equivalent to high performance MBE grown structures