People sure love their cheeses, but scientists have a lot to learn about the fungi responsible for a blue cheese like Roquefort or a soft Camembert. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 24 have pieced together the story of those Penicillium fungi, based on the genomes of 14 fungal species. The findings reveal an important role for the horizontal transfer of genes from one species to another in the fungi's ability to trade their freedom in for the domesticated life.
In addition to the evolutionary interest of the findings, they may also lead to improvements in cheese making, the researchers say. The discovery that genes are easily swapped among species also raises concerns for food safety.
"We were able to identify genes that are directly involved in the adaptation to cheese in Penicillium, opening the way for strain improvement, in particular for obtaining fast-growing strains," says Antoine Branca of L'Université Paris-Sud and CNRS. "Our findings, on the other hand, raise concerns about food safety because they suggest that the co-occurrence of different fungal species in the same food product allows genes to be transferred from one species to the other frequently, as it occurred multiple times, for multiple genomic regions."
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