Fungal genome evolution and software for the life sciences

Abstract

Deep genome sequencing of the fungal kingdom, an ancient and diverse eukaryotic lineage, has shed light on the dynamics of genome evolution. For example, these studies have underscored the importance of evolution by gene duplication, loss, and retention, horizontal gene transfer, and hybridization/introgression. Notwithstanding these discoveries, the fungal kingdom remains largely unexplored and numerous grand challenges remain unresolved such as the evolutionary makings of a fungal pathogen and drivers of asymmetric rates of evolution across lineages. Addressing these and other questions will be enabled by the development of software capable of keeping pace with data generation and implementing novel methodologies to derive biologically meaningful insights. Herein, I summarize insights from work that sheds light on the evolution of pathogens, drivers of rapid evolutionary rates, and describe novel software that was developed for the life sciences. This work sets the stage for future exciting research in multiple biological disciplines.