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

一组不同的真菌在水中分解木材，为一些淡水和咸水食物网提供很大一部分能量和营养。目前尚不清楚哪些真菌会在淹没的木材上定居并持续存在，是否特定的物种对分解很重要，或者是否分解所必需的特定基因在许多物种中是共享的，从而使这些物种在某种程度上可以互换。木材分解将在巴拿马太平洋沿岸的淡水河口河流系统中进行研究。木材样品将浸泡在四种盐度水平下，真菌的多样性和物种组成将与与木材降解酶有关的基因的活性以及通过分解过程对木材化学的变化进行比较。在四种盐度水平下进行该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对真菌群落生态学的理解，将告诉我们真菌多样性的减少如何影响木材的分解，并将表明特定的真菌类群是否对分解至关重要。该项目将为本科生、研究生和博士后提供热带生态学、生物信息学和真菌生物学方面独特的跨学科培训，并将支持美国和拉丁美洲学生的研究和出版。该项目还可能揭示水生真菌中进化的新基因和遗传途径，并应用于纤维素生物燃料的研究和生物修复。培养的真菌还将用于生物勘探项目，该项目筛选抗癌症和热带疾病的活性。

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.