What's in the genome of a ®lamentous fungus? Analysis of the Neurospora genome sequence

Abstract

The German Neurospora Genome Project has assembled sequences from ordered cosmid and BAC clones of linkage groups II and V of the genome of Neurospora crassa in 13 and 12 contigs, respectively. Including additional sequences located on other linkage groups a total of 12 Mb were subjected to a manual gene extraction and annotation process. The genome comprises a small number of repetitive elements, a low degree of segmental duplications and very few paralogous genes. The analysis of the 3218 identi®ed open reading frames provides a ®rst overview of the protein equipment of a ®lamentous fungus. Signi®cantly, N.crassa possesses a large variety of metabolic enzymes including a substantial number of enzymes involved in the degradation of complex substrates as well as secondary metabolism. While several of these enzymes are speci®c for ®lamentous fungi many are shared exclusively with prokaryotes