Bottlenecks and Future Outlooks for High-Throughput Technologies for Filamentous Fungi

From the first cloning into bacteria in 1973 by Stanly Cohen and Herbert Boyer to today’s ability to simultaneously parallel hundreds of different cloning events in one plate, the scientific community has proven again its lack of limitations. Biotechnology has adapted classic low-throughput lab bench protocols and morphed them into a fully functional high-throughput automated factory. Yet, despite the vast potential for both academic and industrial research, these technologies have yet to be fully realized in all organisms. As is the general progression in molecular biology, most technologies are first perfected on bacteria such as Escherichia coli and then moved to yeast and finally to filamentous fungi and mammalian cells. With current high-throughput methods, we can reliably work with many yeasts and bacteria, but as filamentous fungi have some vast growth and working differences, these have been slower to uptake. Some of these differences include larger more spread out plated colonies with easily airborne spores (making picking hard), nonhomogenous growth in liquid media due to mycelia (making liquid handling hard), and the potential for heterokaryons (making screening hard). Despite these bottlenecks, the future is bright as there are examples of both academia and industry beginning to solve some of these issues. We are optimistic that we will eventually see a fully automated high-throughput system that is as easy to use for filamentous fungi as it is for bacteria and yeast.