TreeBASE Search-Matrices for study 805

@ARTICLE{TreeBASE2Ref14734, author = {Mary L. Berbee}, title = {The phylogeny of plant and animal pathogens in the Ascomycota.}, year = {2001}, keywords = {Ascomycota; phylogeny; ascomycete evolution; human pathogenic fungi; plant pathogenic fungi; horizontal transfer; toxin evolution; co-evolution}, doi = {10.1006/pmpp.2001.0355}, url = {}, pmid = {}, journal = {Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology}, volume = {59}, number = {}, pages = {165--187}, abstract = {What makes a fungus pathogenic? In this review, I use phylogenetic inference to speculate on the evolution of plant and animal pathogens in the fungal Phylum Ascomycota. I present a phylogeny using 297 18S ribosomal DNA sequences from GenBank and show that most plant pathogens are concentrated in four classes in the Ascomycota. Animal pathogens are also concentrated, but in two ascomycete classes that contain few, if any plant pathogens. Rather than appearing as a constant character of a class, the ability to cause disease in plants and animals was gained and lost repeatedly. The genes that code for some traits involved in pathogenicity or virulence have been cloned and characterized, and so I explore the evolutionary relationships of a few of the genes for enzymes and toxins known to play roles in diseases. In general, genes known to play roles in pathogenesis are too narrowly distributed and too recent in origin to explain broad patterns of origin of pathogens. Robust phylogenies not only of the fungi, but also of host plants and animals are becoming available, allowing for critical analysis of the nature of coevolutionary warfare. Host animals, particularly human hosts have had little obvious effect on fungal evolution and most cases of fungal disease in humans appears to represent an evolutionary dead end for the fungus. Plants have been important in the evolution of fungi, and the rapid nature of coevolutionary change might partially explain the lack of obvious, global characters uniting all plant pathogens.} }