Genetic Transformation and Vector Developments in Filamentous Fungi

Abstract

Recombinant DNA technology, which has provided techniques for the routine isolation and analysis of genes from almost any organism, was originally successfully employed during the 1970s in prokaryotes, most notably Escherichia coli, and then in eukaiyotes with the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Since this research first began in the 1980s, genetic transformation systems have been developed for a number of fungi, as have numerous transformation/cloning vectors containing a variety of selection markers. Developed primarily as a means to transform plant cells in situ, biolistics has also been successfully applied to a number of filamentous fungi such as. Telomenc DNA sequences have been characterized from the filamentous fungi Neurospora crassa and Fusarium oxysporum. Indeed, in these fungi effort has been made to obtain transformation vectors that integrate into the host genome in order that gene disruption and gene replacement techniques can be developed to gain an insight into gene function and regulation and to allow gene manipulations.