Eight UMass Amherst students – including two undergraduates – were recently awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. UMass Amherst had the third highest number of awards in the state of Massachusetts, behind only MIT and Harvard.
Researchers gain insight into the biological processes of chytrid fungus
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have gained new insight into the biological processes of a chytrid fungus responsible for a deadly skin infection devastating frog populations worldwide.
Led by cell biologist Lillian Fritz-Laylin, the team describes in a paper published Feb. 8 in
Current Biology how the actin networks of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) also serve as an evolutionary Rosetta Stone, revealing the loss of cytoskeletal complexity in the fungal kingdom. Fungi and animals seem so different, but they are actually pretty closely related, says Fritz-Laylin, whose lab studies how cells move, which is a central activity in the progression and prevention of many human diseases. This project, the work of Sarah Prostak in my lab, shows that during early fungal evolution, fungi probably had cells that looked something like our cells, and which could crawl around like our cell