Answer to take-home exam

May 17, 2017

MICRO 241

1. Propose a new model organism for microbial genetics. Describe how it helped
solve a microbial genetics problem. Provide specific examples. Neurospora crassa

Fungi is an example of a model being used for understanding chromatin both in

heterochromatin or actively transcribing regions and euchromatin or
transcriptionally silent regions. Commonly used fungi are the yeasts such as
Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Although unlike
yeasts, filamentous fungi are less studied in genetic researches. (Aramayo and
Selker, 2013). In the 1940s, Neurospora crassa, a filamentous fungi proved to be
very useful in studying the genome of higher organisms. It pioneered the use of
microorgansims for biochemical genetics (Davis and Perkins, 2002). It has features
of higher eukaryotes such as DNA methylation and HEK237 methylation
(polycomb) system, as well as RNAi (RNA interference) and other epigenetic
process that are lacking in yeasts.

<insert basic features>

<insert basic genetics>
First, it was a good model in studying DNA methylation. In N. crassa, almost 1.5% of
the cytosine are methylated facilitating genetic studies. All known DNA
methyltransferases (DMT) including those in prokaryotes and eukaryotes show
striking homology in their catalytic domains (Aramayo and Selker, 2013).