Fungi.guru: comparative genomic and transcriptomic database for the Fungi kingdom

Abstract

The fungi kingdom is composed of eukaryotic heterotrophs, which are responsible for balancing the ecosystem and play a major role as decomposers. They also produce a vast diversity of secondary metabolites, which have antibiotic or pharmacological properties. However, our lack of knowledge of gene function in fungi precludes us from tailoring them to our needs and tapping into their metabolic diversity. To remedy this, we gathered genomic and gene expression data of 19 most widely-researched fungi to build a database, fungi.guru, which contains tools for cross-species identification of conserved pathways, functional gene modules, and gene families. We exemplify how our database can elucidate the molecular function, biological process and cellular component of genes involved in various biological processes, by identifying a secondary metabolite pathway producing gliotoxin in Aspergillus fumigatus, the catabolic pathway of cellulose in Coprinopsis cinerea and the conserved DNA replication pathway in Fusarium graminearum and Pyricularia oryzae. The database is available at www.fungi.guru.