FGSC Aspergillus Homepage Archive, 2007
December 6, 2007
The Preliminary program for the 5th International Aspergillus meeting is was available online
September 25, 2007
Following the 2007 FGSC Advisory Board Meeting, Dr. G. May contributed several protocols for working with Aspergillus and they are posted online here at the Aspergillus Home Page.
If you have protocols to contribute, please send them to the FGSC.
August 31, 2007
The 5th International Aspergillus meeting (alias Asperfest 5) will be held Apr 4-5, 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland immediately before 9th European Conference on Fungal Genetics. The program will be be here and registration will be at the ECGF9 website (http://www.ecfg.info/).
July 25, 2007
A colleague writes asking if anyone has an antibody for catB from Aspergillus. This raises the question of whether the FGSC should undertake to distribute antibodies that people are willing to deposit. Let us know if you have this antibody, or others, that you would be willing to share.
July 17, 2007
Michael Hynes writes "The legendary book that Bill
Timberlake has been writing in the wilds of New Mexico
was published this year.... it is an excellent read as an airport/vacation
book. As you might expect the science and sociology of science is so
accurate compared to that of author's such as Michael Crichton."
Bill wrote the FGSC to say that it is available from Amazon.com
May 2, 2007
We received a protocol from Jakob Blæsbjerg Nielsen for PCR from Aspergillus spores
Jakob is in the Center for Microbial Biotechnology at the BioCentrum-DTU, Technical University of Denmark
April 24, 2007
Michael Hynes e-mailed to point out that there were a number of protocols for working with Aspergillus online at Nature Protocols.
Rather than re-creating a list, I will post a pre-formatted search.
April 18, 2007
AspGD Support Letters needed by May 4, 2007
An RO1 proposal to NIAID is being prepared for AspGD, a curated Aspergillus Genome Database modeled on SGD (http://www.yeastgenome.org/) and CGD (http://www.candidagenome.org/ ). Gavin Sherlock (Stanford University, PI of CGD) will serve as PI and Jennifer Wortman (TIGR, Eukaryotic Annotation) will serve as co-PI. If funded, the initial database will be anchored by A. fumigatus and A. nidulans genomes and will be constructed to allow easy addition of other Aspergilli. AspGD will be set up just like SGD and CGD with individual locus pages including phenotypic, genetic and microarray data, plus it will include the ability to compare gene orthologs among Aspergilli. Gavin and Jennifer both have stressed their intention to incorporate all previous annotation improvements and to work closely with the community in keeping AspGD updated. (For CGD it typically takes less than a week to get changes brought to the attention of curators into the database and available to the wider scientific community). This proposal was discussed during the Aspergillus meeting at Asilomar last month (http://www.fgsc.net/Aspergillus/asperghome.html) and received unanimous, enthusiastic support from the 121 researchers attending.
I am collecting community support letters for the proposal. Please address your letters to Gavin Sherlock (Dept. of Genetics, Stanford University, S201A, Grant Building, Stanford, CA 94306-5120) and Jennifer Wortman (TIGR, 9712 Medical Center Dr, Rockville, MD 20850). Send letters to me by May 4, 2007 by email (aspergillus@plantbio.uga.edu) or snail mail (Michelle Momany, Dept. of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602). If possible send pdfs or Word files. In your letter include a brief description of your work, funding sources (especially NIH) and how the proposed database would help you. We would also appreciate support letters from researchers working with other fungi who would potentially make use of AspGD.
Sincerely,
Michelle Momany
Chair, Aspergillus Genomes Research Policy Committee
AspGD Specific Aims:
1. Creation of the Aspergillus Genome Database (AspGD); 2. Primary Annotation, refinement and comparison of Aspergillus Genome Sequences; 3. Secondary Annotation of Aspergillus Gene Products; 4. Tools for Sequence Manipulation, Retrieval and Analysis; 5. Service to the Scientific Community
January 6, 2007
The Program for the Aspergillus meeting at Asilomar is available.