The front cover of the 155th issue of the Microbiology scientific journal displays an image of a fluorescent nuclear protein over a fungal cell background.

The research has been conducted by Dr. Unai Ugalde and Dr. Aitor Gartzia, from the University of the Basque Country, and Dr. Oier Etxebeste and Dr. Eduardo A. Espeso, from the Centre of Biological Research of the Spanish National Research Council.

Unai Ugalde is head of the laboratory studying cell development through fungal life-cycle. Fungi are the most simple organisms in which specialised cells are found. Fungal analysis is essential to understand equivalent development processes in higher organisms such as plants or human beings.

The authors of this paper study nuclei evolution and distribution throughout cell life-cycle, and in this particular case they have used fluorescent proteins present in some jellyfish species to “label” target proteins. This way, it is quite simple to identify and monitor their movements under the microscope.

This paper is particularly relevant because it reports the first time labelling of H1 Histone protein, a macromolecule related to cell mitosis or division responsible for DNA packaging, in Aspergillus nidulans. This filamentous fungal species has been used to study basic genetic problems (recombination, DNA repair or mutations), cell cycle and pathogenesis control and other species’ metabolism.