Parasexual recombination in Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus fumigatus

This study aimed to assess the difference in mitotic crossing over occuring during laboratory parasexual recombination. Using two compatible strains of A. niger, and two for A. fumigatus, we first forced heterokaryons, and then selected a single diploid spore. This diploid was then transferred 10 times and sequenced in triplicate, or was immediately decomposed back to a haploid state with approximately 20 replications. Notably, for A. fumigatus we were able to use siblings of a previous cross that were able to form heteroakaryons, allowing extremely high resoution due to several thousand of SNPs between the starting haploid strains.