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

各种各样的真菌在水中分解木材，提供了支持一些淡水和咸水食物网的相当大一部分能量和营养。目前尚不清楚哪些真菌可能会在沉水的木材上定居并持续存在，特定的物种是否对分解很重要，或者许多物种之间是否共享可能对分解至关重要的特定基因，从而使这些物种在某种程度上可以互换。将在巴拿马太平洋沿岸的淡水-河口河流系统中研究木材分解。木材样品将在四个盐度水平下浸泡，真菌的多样性和物种组成将与木材降解酶相关基因的活性和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、真菌物种相互作用和底物使用。这项研究的结果将有助于我们理解真菌群落生态学，告诉我们真菌多样性的减少如何影响木材分解，并将指明特定的真菌群是否对分解至关重要。该项目将在本科生、研究生和博士后水平提供热带生态学、生物信息学和真菌生物学方面的独特、跨学科培训，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，并将其应用于纤维素生物燃料研究和生物修复。培养出的真菌还将被用于一个生物勘探项目，该项目旨在筛选抗癌和热带疾病的活动。

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.