User:Djbartle

From MicrobeWiki, the student-edited microbiology resource

Classification

Higher order taxa

Kingdom: Fungi
Division: Ascomycota
Class:	Eurotiomycetes
Order:	Eurotiales
Family:Trichocomaceae
Genus:	Aspergillus

Species

Aspergillus nidulans

Description and significance

A. nidulans is a form of filamentous fungi that has proved to serve as a valuable model organism in the realm of eukaryotic cell biology.  Due to its capabilty to generate sexual spores via meiosis, researchers are capable of generating variable strains of the species.  For the last 50 years, A. nidulans has been used to study a wide array of processes and topics such as cell cycles, DNA repair, nucleokinesis, pathogenesis, mutation, and evolutionary processes. As a model organism, species' diversified genome (unlike its relatives) allows for a more developed understanding of other species in the Aspergillus genus.

Genome structure

Considering that A. nidulans is sexually reproductive, it contains a well-developed genetics system. Its genome is composed of 30 million base pairs in size with around 9,500 protein-coding genes on eight different chromosomes [1].  

Cell structure and metabolism

Ecology

Pathology

Application in pharmaceutical research

Current research

References

1 Galagan JE; et al. (2005). "Sequencing of Aspergillus nidulans and comparative analysis with A. fumigatus and A. oryzae". Nature. 438 (7071): 1105–15. doi:10.1038/nature04341. PMID 16372000.