Gene family expansions and transcriptome signatures uncover fungal adaptations to wood decay

17 p.-7 fig.Because they comprise some of the most efficient wood-decayers, Polyporales fungi impact carbon cycling in forest environment. Despite continuous discoveries on the enzymatic machinery involved in wood decomposition, the vision on their evolutionary adaptation to wood decay and genome diversity remains incomplete.We combined the genome sequence information from 50 Polyporales species, including 26 newly sequenced genomes and sought for genomic and functional adaptations to wood decay through the analysis of genome composition and transcriptome responses to different carbon sources.The genomes of Polyporales from different phylogenetic clades showed poor conservation in macrosynteny, indicative of genome rearrangements. We observed different gene family expansion/contraction histories for plant cell wall degrading enzymes in core polyporoids and phlebioids and captured expansions for genes involved in signaling and regulation in the lineages of white rotters. Furthermore, we identified conserved cupredoxins, thaumatin-like proteins and Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenases with a yet uncharacterized appended module as new candidate players in wood decomposition.Given the current need for enzymatic toolkits dedicated to the transformation of renewable carbon sources, the observed genomic diversity among Polyporales strengthens the relevance of mining Polyporales biodiversity to understand the molecular mechanisms of wood decay.This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, a Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility (grant # DE-AC02-05CH11231, DESC0019427 to I.V.G. and B.M.); Institut Carnot 3BCAR, the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Region Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur and the Groupement de Recherche Génomique Environnementale to H.H.; the Laboratory of Excellence ARBRE (grant # ANR-11-LABX-0002-01 to F.M.); the Region Lorraine and the European Regional Development Fund to F.M.; the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Momentum Program (grant # LP2019-13/2019 to L.G.N.); the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (grant # BIO2017-86559-R to A.T.M.); the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (grant # PIE-201620E081 to A.T.M.); the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the European Regional Development Fund and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (grant # RTI2018-093683-B-I00 to L.D.E. and M.J.M.) and the Czech Science Foundation (grant# 17-20110S to P.B. and M.Š.).Peer reviewe

Pod Stalinem:field notes from another modernity

David Frisby’s work was a career-long engagement with modernity, informed by a tradition of classical social theory whose neglect in Anglo-American sociology David did much to remedy through his translations as well as his writings: the ‘sociological impressionism’ that seeks to grasp totalities through ‘snapshots’ and ‘fragments’ whose representatives included Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. Conceived as a homage to David’s legacy (and his personal influence on my own intellectual development) rather than a commentary on his work, this essay is a Benjaminian dérive through twentieth-century Prague, which complements and counterpoints David’s beloved Vienna and Berlin. Prague’s modern history, I argue, gives Baudelaire’s celebrated definition of modernity as ‘le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent’ surreally new dimensions. Indeed, the city might well be regarded as a ‘capital of the twentieth century’ in whose ‘ruins’ we can begin to excavate the ‘prehistory of postmodernity.