Dimensions: Community assembly and decomposer function of aquatic fungi along a salinity gradient

维度：水生真菌沿盐度梯度的群落组装和分解功能

• 批准号: 1241212
• 负责人: Astrid Ferrer
• 金额: $ 79.77万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1241212&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dimensions; Community; assembly; decomposer; function

A diverse group of fungi decompose wood in water, providing a significant fraction of the energy and nutrients that support some freshwater and saltwater foodwebs. It is not known what fungi may colonize and then persist on submerged wood, whether particular species are important for decomposition, or whether particular genes that may be necessary for decomposition are shared among many species, making those species somewhat interchangeable. Wood decomposition will be studied in freshwater-estuarine river systems in Pacific coastal Panama. Wood samples will be immersed at four salinity levels and the diversity and species composition of fungi will be compared to the activity of genes associated with wood-degrading enzymes and to changes in wood chemistry through the decomposition process. Conducting this experiment at four salinity levels will reveal how salinity influences fungal gene expression, fungal species interactions, and substrate use. Results from this study will contribute to our understanding of fungal community ecology, will tell us how a decrease in fungal diversity may affect wood decomposition, and will indicate whether particular fungal groups are critical for decomposition.This project will provide unique, cross-disciplinary training in tropical ecology, bioinformatics, and fungal biology at the undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral levels and will support research and publication by U.S. and Latin American students. This project may also reveal novel genes and genetic pathways that have evolved in aquatic fungi and that have application for cellulosic biofuel research and bioremediation. Culture-grown fungi will also be contributed to a bio-prospecting project that screens for activity against cancers and tropical diseases.

一组不同的真菌在水中分解木材，提供支持一些淡水和咸水食物网的能量和营养物质的重要部分。目前尚不清楚哪些真菌可能会在水下的木材上定居并持续存在，特定的物种是否对分解很重要，或者分解所必需的特定基因是否在许多物种之间共享，使得这些物种在某种程度上可以互换。木材分解将在太平洋沿岸巴拿马的淡水河口河流系统进行研究。将把木材样品浸入四种含盐量的环境中，并将真菌的多样性和物种组成与木材降解酶相关基因的活性以及分解过程中木材化学的变化进行比较。在四个盐度水平下进行这项实验将揭示盐度如何影响真菌基因表达，真菌种间相互作用和底物利用。这项研究的结果将有助于我们了解真菌群落生态学，将告诉我们真菌多样性的减少如何影响木材分解，并将表明特定的真菌群体是否对分解至关重要。该项目将在本科生中提供热带生态学，生物信息学和真菌生物学方面的独特，跨学科的培训，研究生和博士后水平，并将支持美国和拉丁美洲学生的研究和出版。该项目还可能揭示在水生真菌中进化的新基因和遗传途径，并可用于纤维素生物燃料研究和生物修复。培养的真菌也将有助于一个生物勘探项目，筛选抗癌和热带疾病的活性。