Botrytis cinerea

In the world of winemaking, ‘noble rot’, caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea, is highly prized. This fungus infects grapes, penetrating their skin and causing the berries to lose water through evaporation, which in turn concentrates their sugars and flavors.

• This process is essential for producing high-quality sweet wines like the Sauternes of Bordeaux, the Trockenbeerenauslese of Germany and Austria, and the Tokaji Aszús of Hungary. Since only a small percentage of grapes are infected, they must be hand-picked.

A Startling Genetic Discovery

While it’s a fundamental principle that the nucleus of an organism’s cell contains one or more complete sets of its chromosomes (a property crucial for cloning animals), a recent discovery challenges this for Botrytis cinerea and another fungus, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum.

• A team of researchers from Sichuan University in China and the University of British Columbia in Canada found that, due to an idiosyncrasy, these fungi cannot be cloned in the traditional way.
• The reason: no single nucleus in these fungi contains a complete set of chromosomes. Instead, the full set of chromosomes is distributed across two or more nuclei, with any single nucleus holding only a subset.

(Source: TH)