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Since John Raper’s pioneering studies with the basidiomycetes in the 1960s, and the elegant work of Ira Herskowitz with Saccharomyces, genetic, molecular, and genomic analyses of fungal sexual reproduction have helped to illuminate how sexual cycles function in, as well as drive, evolution. The biological principles involved are profound and can serve as general paradigms for how cell identity is established and maintained, how cells sense and respond to extracellular cues, the role of genetic rearrangements in generating changes in cell identity and fate, and how genomic regions governing sexual identity are organized and evolved.

Drawing on the great advances made over the past 10 years, this volume provides illuminating insights into the molecular details of cell-type specification, mating-type switching, pheromone perception and signaling, and cellular and nuclear fusion. The tremendous impact of comparative genomics on the analysis of mating is evident in many of the chapters in this book. This volume includes chapters on both model and pathogenic fungi as well as a section that looks forward to what we hope to learn in other fungal lineages. The book concludes with a selection of chapters on the implications of sex, and studies of experimental evolution, in a broader evolutionary context.

Key Features

• Offers a comprehensive examination of sexual determination and reproduction in an entire kingdom of life
• Encompasses the current state of knowledge and also serves as a resource for the next several decades of research on these fascinating systems
• Examines model organisms that are particularly amenable to genetic, molecular, and genomic analysis
• Ties current knowledge to broader questions about sexual reproduction and evolution
• Provides a paradigm to guide research into the mechanisms of mating in all of the fungi

Hardcover, 572 pages, four-color insert, illustrations, index.