Ecology and evolution of dark matter fungi in aquatic biofilms

• Applicant: Dr. Christian Wurzbacher
• Subject Area: Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology ; Evolution and Systematics of Plants and Fungi ; Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 421479616

In the aquatic environment, fungi show strong links to a variety of other organisms, including algae, metazoans and bacteria, which have promoted fungal diversification. Fungal evolution began early in the aquatic environment. The interactions with other organisms led to many biotrophic lifestyles and a great phylogenetic diversity. It is likely that the early aquatic fungi already provided the functional traits that led to the success of the fungal kingdom as one of the Earth's most diverse organismic groups. Despite the quite extensive studies investigating the complexity of aquatic microbiomes, neither the great phylogenetic diversity of aquatic fungi nor the interactions of aquatic fungi with other organisms are well described. This paradox is due to the fact that the aquatic fungi are not recognized as such, and that too few studies investigate the aquatic microbiomes holistically. Aquatic fungi often appear as unknown genetic elements without any recognizable agreement with our databases. This led us to establish the term Dark Matter Fungi (DMF) to highlight the unknowns of early divergent fungal lineages in the aquatic environment. One of the most promising aquatic habitats for the investigation of DMF and their interactions with other organisms on a small scale is the aquatic biofilm. In particular, heterotrophic biofilms may contain a high proportion of DMF, which facilitates the elucidation of DMF interactions and ecological functions. It is completely unclear which organismic interactions are the determinants for DMF in biofilms and to what extent DMF influence the biofilm structure. Understanding the ecology and evolutionary properties of DMF remains a challenge given the complexity of natural communities. Due to the new methodological developments, however, it is now possible to develop a conceptual view of DMF ecology and evolution through manipulation experiments on natural and model biofilm communities. The goal of the proposed Emmy Noether research group is to understand the basic ecology and evolution of aquatic DMF. By combining microdissection, high throughput cultivation and next generation molecular sequencing, we will find out how and which fungal interactions with microbes affect the overall structure and function of the microbial community. We will also generate extensive DMF barcode and genome data that will serve as key resources for building a robust early fungal phylogeny and allow us to discuss early fungal evolution based on phylogenomics and biotrophic interactions.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups
• Major Instrumentation: Laserdissektionsmikroskop
• Instrumentation Group: 5040 Spezielle Mikroskope (außer 500-503)