Powdery mildew at an evolutionary dead end

The size of a genome tells us nothing about the comprehensiveness of the genetic information it contains. The genome of powdery mildew, which can destroy entire harvests with its fine fungal threads, is a good example of this. Although the pathogen has almost 120 million base pairs, and therefore one of the largest genomes of the sac fungi, at barely 6,000, its gene count is far lower than that of comparable species. It has lost many of the genes required for separate metabolism found in other fungi. Thus, from a genetic perspective, powdery mildew is stuck in an evolutionary dead end from which it is unable to liberate itself...

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