Mycological Dispatches

for polyketide synthases and ABC transporters. The genome is

rich in complex repeats, one class of which is clustered and
may serve as centromeres. Partial copies of the extrachromosomal ribosomal DNA (r DNA) element are found at the ends of
each chromosome, suggesting a novel telomere structure and
use of a common mechanism to maintain both the rDNA and
chromosomal termini. A proteonome-based phylogeny shows
that the amoebozoa diverged from the animal-fungal lineage
after the plant-animal split, but Dictyostelium seems to have
retained more of the diversity of the ancestral genome than
have plants, animals or fungi.

35

references

Butterfield NJ, 2005. Probable Proterozoic fungi. Paleobiology 31:

165182.
Eichinger L, et al., 2005. The genome of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Nature 435: 4357.
Hijri M, Sanders IR, 2005. Low gene copy number shows that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inherit genetically different nuclei.
Nature 433: 160163.
Maguire KL, 2005. Touchy feely fungi. Biologist 52: 206210.

doi:10.1016/j.mycol.2005.11.011

The Mycological Society of Japan and the BMS join forces

2006 will see the 50th Anniversary Annual Meeting of the
Mycological Society of Japan (MSJ). As part of the celebration
of this significant event the MSJ and the BMS will be holding
a joint Symposium at the MSJs Annual Meeting on the 3rd
and 4th June 2006, and this will be held in Chiba, Japan. The
Symposium will be jointly funded by the MSJ and BMS and
will consist of a plenary lecture given by Prof. Geoff Gadd
(BMS President) and six presentations from young mycologists, of which three will be members of the BMS and three
members of the MSJ. Selection of the young mycologists representing the BMS was made by members of the BMS Council at
our recent Annual Scientific Meeting in Manchester. To be eligible for selection, the candidates needed to be at the postgraduate or postdoctoral level and lacking a permanent
position. Choosing who should receive these highly prestigious awards proved very difficult because of the extremely
high standard and quality of the talks/posters presented. After
much consideration the following candidates were selected:
(1) Graham Wright (University of Edinburgh) who presented
a talk on Manipulating fungi with light and who won the
doi:10.1016/j.mycol.2005.11.008

Howard Eggins Prize for the best lecture by a young scientist

at the meeting; Andrew Bowen (University of Dundee) who
presented a talk on the Colonisation and invasion of porous
matrices by filamentous fungi; and Emilie Combet (Warwick
Horticultural Research International) who presented a poster
on the Origin and role of fungal flavour volatiles. These outstanding mycologists, as young ambassadors of the BMS, will
be provided with financial support to travel to and attend the
meeting in Japan. They will also each contribute a paper of their
talk for inclusion in a Special Issue of Mycoscience, the official
English journal of the MSJ. Besides Prof. Gadd, Prof. Neil Gow
(a former President of the BMS) will also present a plenary
lecture at the meeting. For further information about this
meeting visit the following webpage: http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/
msj7/english/index_html. Alternatively contact the conference secretary Kiminori Shimizu by email at kshimizu@faculty.
chiba-u.jp.

Nick D. READ