Dominic Adams

Biol 303
October 17, 2015
Writing assignment 4
In his September 24, 2015 article from the New York Times, Carl Zimmer explains the
nature of a set of experiments done by Ricardo Rodriguez de la Vega. Vegas topic of research is
a curious one, he studies the genetics of fungi used in cheesemaking. By sampling from some of
the finest and smelliest cheeses from around the world, Vega and his team have learned some
interesting thing about the behavior of cheese-making fungi. By comparing the genomes of the
various molds, they have reconstructed the history of several mold species. One piece of
knowledge gained from this study is that not only have some of the molds used in cheese-making
evolved genes beneficial to surviving in cheese, but they have also picked up large chunks of
DNA from other species. To test this, they sequenced the genomes of 10 species of penicillium, 6
of which grew on milk, and found that in some species there were large chunks of DNA that
were not found in closely related species, but were found very distantly related species. This
seemed to imply that horizontal gene transfer, the swapping of DNA between species, was taking
place in the fungi. This was significant because while it is known to occur very commonly
among bacteria, there is currently little evidence of it occuring in eukaryotic organisms. Through
this, they identified several gene groups, most notably Wallaby and CheeseTer, that are only
found in the cheese-molds and not in the wild species. These groups were found to contain genes
that help the fungus grow on cheese or in milk. Because of the strong similarity of these gene
groups, it leads to the belief that they developed fairly recently from a common ancestor and
havent yet had time to mutate. These special genes allow the fungus to react more efficiently
and allow cheesemakers to produce cheeses of higher and higher quality. Vega warns, however,
that cheesemakers should be careful that the genes that are benefitting them now, not end up
presenting in molds that hinder cheesemaking.
Comparing the article I used in this paper and the one in the last paper, the differences are
pretty substantial. In the last paper, there was a lot more experimental and scientific fact, whereas
this article focused more on the prospective uses and consequences of the information. This is
often the major difference between scientific and lay articles. While scientific sources care more
about how something happens and what it does, lay sources care more about how this can affect
us.
Zimmer, Carl. "That Stinky Cheese Is a Result of Evolutionary Overdrive." The New York
Times. The New York Times, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
Kurland C.G., Canback B., Berg O.G. (2003) Horizontal gene transfer: a critical view. P Natl
Acad Sci USA 100:96589662

Gladieux, Pierre, Jeanne Ropars, Hlne Badouin, Antoine Branca, Gabriela Aguileta, Damien
M. De Vienne, Ricardo C. Rodrguez De La Vega, Sara Branco, and Tatiana Giraud. "Fungal
Evolutionary Genomics Provides Insight into the Mechanisms of Adaptive Divergence in
Eukaryotes."Molecular Ecology Mol Ecol (2014): 753-73. Print