Why Sequence Trichoderma reesei?

Trichoderma reesei is an industrially important cellulolytic filamentous fungus. In light of of T. reesei's capacity to secrete large amounts of cellulases and hemicellulases, the DOE is funding research into developing T. reesei as a host to produce low-cost enzymes for the conversion of plant biomass materials into industrially useful bioproducts such as sugars and bioethanol.

As a system for studying genomics, T. reesei with its genome size of 33Mb and seven chromosomes has many advantages: EST and cDNA collections are available, BAC libraries are available to academic researchers from the Fungal Genomics Laboratory at NCSU, DNA-mediated transformation is a routine procedure, gene knockout protocols have been developed, and there is an active academic community of researchers worldwide.

Genome Portal site: Trichoderma reesei