FGSC BLOG ARCHIVE

The US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the top ten growth areas for the period 2004-2014 will include home and institutional nurses, restaurant staff, janitors, middle managers and post secondary teachers. This last category is the only one that requires a graduate degree. Nice to know that we are in a growth area.

There are changes afoot at the UMKC Environmental Health and Safety office. The new director has commissioned an assessment of risk and hired his brother to do it. That seems like a significant risk. Still, progress is a good thing, right?  If nothing else, maybe they will learn how to spell....

9/22/06

Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox. There will not likely be a lot of pagan celebrating here in the heartland of America. Mega religion has taken hold here and it is with a certain hesitancy that I display a fsm logo on my Subaru. Speaking of which, the Subaru is the MODE in the Parking Lot outside Biological Sciences. Moreover, the 4- door hatchback is overwhelmingly the most common car parked outside BSB. The mega religious do not have a monopoly on values and moderates do have a voice here in Missouri.

I did the Kansas City Zoo Run for the Elephants last weekend with my two beautiful kids. My son finished a bit ahead and my daughter a bit behind, just like before. I hate to say, however, that my 4 mile time was 35:40. This is over one minute slower than my 4 mile time last spring. That was a point to point all downhill course, however. This course is within the zoo and includes several hills and narrow paths. Overall, however, this is one of the best runs in the Midwest. No cars, happy people, active animals. This is the second time we have done this run together and I am hoping that it turns into a tradition.

9/15/06

The schedule and registration information for the 24th Fungal Genetics Conference at Asilomar are now available online at the FGSC site. Registration will begin in mid October.

The FGSC collaborates on seven fungal genome programs. This includes our holding cosmid, BAC, fosmid or EST sets for Neurospora, Aspergillus nidulans, Magnaporthe, Fusarium graminearum, Puccinia, and Cryptococcus. We have also just agreed to hold fosmid clones from Batrachochytrium. Many of these are mapped on their respective genomes at the Broad Institute. We also hold a number of the strains that have had their genomes sequenced.

With a new Chancellor and Provost, UMKC is continuing to evaluate the different administrative units on campus. Having a free and independent School of Biological Sciences is somewhat unusual and we find that we have to justify our continued existence, with the alternative being combined with the College of Arts and Sciences. I prepared some talking points to describe the FGSC to non-fungal geneticists.

• The Fungal Genetics Stock Center is an international repository that has been supported by the National Science Foundation since 1960.
• The Fungal Genetics Stock Center distributes materials to over 35 countries.
• The Fungal Genetics Stock Center is part of seven major genome programs.
• The Fungal Genetics Stock Center has collaborations with researchers at seven major universities
• Clients of the Fungal Genetics Stock Center include researchers studying environmental biology, human, plant, and animal pathogens, as well as model systems.

9/12/06

	Sunday September 10  was the date for the Midwest Meltdown Triathlon held at the beautiful and scenic Wyandotte Lake County Park in Kansas City, KS. I competed in the short course (1/3 mile swim, 15 mile bike, 3.5 mile run) and managed to finish 5th among men 45- 49 and 2nd among senior Clydesdale men. The rain stopped early in the morning and race weather was perfect. The leaves on walnut and sycamore trees are just starting to turn and the air was cool all day.
	Most interestingly, the rocks bordering the transition area had been mulched with some kind of chipped wood. The mulch was composted and had likely been spread last spring. I am sure that I was the only person who noticed that the mulch was covered with birds nest fungi.

1.  Integration of The Neurospora Compendium entries: entries from the compendium have been incorporated as community annotations. Users can now look up genes using this information on the Find Features page.
2.  Untranslated regions (5' and 3') were added to over 1400 genes based on available EST data, and 20 alternatively spliced transcripts were manually annotated.
3.  tRNA and rRNA features have been assigned NCU numbers and, where possible, provided with names from the compendium.
4.  A mitochondrial annotation from Dr. Richard Collins is available for download and also for BLASTing.

The opinions and ideas expressed here are my personal opinions and do not represent the position of the FGSC or the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Any resemblance to persons, alive or previously alive, is purely coincidental, except when I mention living or previously living people explicitly and especially when I include photos of living or previously living people.