Project description:Background: The soil environment is responsible for sustaining most terrestrial plant life on earth, yet we know surprisingly little about the important functions carried out by diverse microbial communities in soil. Soil microbes that inhabit the channels of decaying root systems, the detritusphere, are likely to be essential for plant growth and health, as these channels are the preferred locations of new root growth. Understanding the microbial metagenome of the detritusphere and how it responds to agricultural management such as crop rotations and soil tillage will be vital for improving global food production. Methods: The rhizosphere soils of wheat and chickpea growing under + and - decaying root were collected for metagenomics sequencing. A gene catalogue was established by de novo assembling metagenomic sequencing. Genes abundance was compared between bulk soil and rhizosphere soils under different treatments. Conclusions: The study describes the diversity and functional capacity of a high-quality soil microbial metagenome. The results demonstrate the contribution of the microbiome from decaying root in determining the metagenome of developing root systems, which is fundamental to plant growth, since roots preferentially inhabit previous root channels. Modifications in root microbial function through soil management, can ultimately govern plant health, productivity and food security.
Project description:In this study, we compared the transcriptomeic profiles of two recently sequenced white-rot wood-decaying mushrooms, Trametes pubescens and Phlebia centrifuga, during their growth on two common plant biomass substrates at different temperatures.
Project description:AIM: By adopting comparative transcriptomic approach, we investigated the gene expression of wood decomposing Basidiomycota fungus Phlebia radiata. Our aim was to reveal how hypoxia and lignocellulose structure affect primary metabolism and the expression of wood decomposition related genes. RESULTS: Hypoxia was a major regulator for intracellular metabolism and extracellular enzymatic degradation of wood polysaccharides by the fungus. Our results manifest how oxygen depletion affects not only over 200 genes of fungal primary metabolism but also plays central role in regulation of secreted CAZyme (carbohydrate-active enzyme) encoding genes. Based on these findings, we present a hypoxia-response mechanism in wood-decaying fungi divergent from the regulation described for Ascomycota fermenting yeasts and animal-pathogenic species of Basidiomycota.
Project description:Agaricomycetes produce the most efficient enzyme systems to degrade wood and the most complex morphological structures in the fungal kingdom. Despite decades-long interest in their genetic bases, the evolution and functional diversity of both wood-decay and fruiting body formation are incompletely known.Here, we perform comparative genomic and transcriptomic analyses of wood-decay and fruiting body development in Auriculariopsis ampla and Schizophyllum commune (Schizophyllaceae), species with secondarily simplified morphologies and enigmatic wood-decay strategy and weak pathogenicity to woody plants. The plant cell wall degrading enzyme repertoires of Schizophyllaceae are transitional between those of white rot species and less efficient wood-degraders such as brown rot or mycorrhizal fungi. Rich repertoires of suberinase and tannase genes were found in both species, with tannases restricted to Agaricomycetes that preferentially colonize bark-covered wood, suggesting potential complementation of their weaker wood-decaying abilities and adaptations to wood colonization through the bark. Fruiting body transcriptomes of A. ampla and S. commune revealed a high rate of divergence in developmental gene expression, but also several genes with conserved developmental expression, including novel transcription factors and small-secreted proteins, some of the latter might represent fruiting body effectors. Taken together, our analyses highlighted novel aspects of wood-decay and fruiting body development in a widely distributed family of mushroom-forming fungi.
Project description:Cyanobacteria are ubiquitous microorganisms with crucial ecosystem functions, yet most knowledge of their biology relates to aquatic taxa. We have constructed metagenomes for 50 taxonomically well-characterized terrestrial cyanobacterial cultures. These data will support phylogenomic studies of evolutionary relationships and gene content among these unique algae and their aquatic relatives.