Many of the most important plant diseases are caused by fungal pathogens that form
specialized cell structures to breach the leaf surface as well as to proliferate inside the plant …

Plant pathogenic fungi often developed specialized infection structures to breach the outer
surface of a host plant. These structures, called appressoria, lead the invasion of the plant by …

Ustilago maydis is a plant pathogen that requires a specific structure called infective filament
to penetrate the plant tissue. Although able to grow, this filament is cell cycle arrested on the …

Activation of virulence in pathogenic fungi often involves differentiation processes that need
the reset of the cell cycle and induction of a new morphogenetic program. Therefore, the …

In the corn smut fungus Ustilago maydis, mating of two haploid sporidia is a prerequisite for
subsequent colonization of the host. Cyclic AMP (cAMP) and pheromone signals have been …

Our understanding of how cell cycle regulation and virulence are coordinated during the
induction of fungal pathogenesis is limited. In the maize smut fungus Ustilago maydis …

The regulation of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) activity through inhibitory phosphorylation
seems to play an important role in the eukaryotic cell cycle. We have investigated the …

Many filamentous fungal pathogens induce drastic modulation of host cells causing
abnormal infectious structures such as galls, or tumors that arise as a result of re …

The maize pathogen Ustilago maydis has to undergo various morphological transitions for
the completion of its sexual life cycle. For example, haploid cells respond to pheromone by …

Ustilago maydis, the causal agent of corn smut, has emerged as a basidiomycete model
system for signal transduction, dimorphism, and disease development. The well …