Secret lifestyles of Neurospora crassa

Abstract

Neurospora crassa has a long history as an excellent model for genetic, cellular, and biochemical research. Although this fungus is known as a saprotroph, it normally appears on burned vegetations or trees after forest fires. However, due to a lack of experimental evidence, the nature of its association with living plants remains enigmatic. Here we report that Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) is a host plant for N. crassa. The endophytic lifestyle of N. crassa was found in its interaction with Scots pine. Moreover, the fungus can switch to a pathogenic state when its balanced interaction with the host is disrupted. Our data reveal previously unknown lifestyles of N. crassa, which are likely controlled by both environmental and host factors. Switching among the endophytic, pathogenic, and saprotrophic lifestyles confers upon fungi phenotypic plasticity in adapting to changing environments and drives the evolution of fungi and associated plants.

FUNGuild: An open annotation tool for parsing fungal community datasets by ecological guild

“…One important issue with both our database and the goal of guild assignment in general is the fact that some fungi do not fall exclusively into a single guild (Promputtha et al, 2007;Parfitt et al, 2010). For example, Neurospora crassa may be present as a saprotroph, a pathogen, or an endophyte on plants depending on life stage and environmental conditions (Kuo et al, 2014). In the cases where split ecologies are known, FUNGuild has been set to assign "possible" in the guild confidence category, which effectively weighs each possible ecology equally (see discussion below).…”

Clonal reproduction in fungi

“…germinate, end up producing colonies on cooked vegetation after a fire is not understood, but endophytism is a possibility (74).…”

Diverse data supports the transition of filamentous fungal model organisms into the post-genomics era

“…Similarly, the impact of N. crassa as a model cannot be underappreciated (Davis 2004). With new contributions in understanding photobiology and circadian rhythms (Baker et al 2012), epigenetics and genome defence (Aramayo & Selker 2013), and following on the demonstration that N. crassa has an epiphytic growth phase (Kuo et al 2014), these important models have more to teach us.…”

“…Currently Neurospora has nearly 2000 genome and transcriptome projects published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information Short Read Archive and over 600 strains in the FGSC collection have been subject to transcriptome or genome sequence analysis including wild-type (Ellison et al 2011a) and classical mutant strains (McCluskey et al 2011). The impact of shared resources has reinforced Neurospora as a model for plant biomass deconstruction (Znameroski et al 2012), plant–microbe interactions (Kuo et al 2014), and a myriad of areas of cell biology and physiology (Roche et al 2014a). Most genome resources for Neurospora were originally maintained at the Broad Institute, although as of 2016 these are only available as an historical archive (http://archive.broadinstitute.org/ftp/pub/annotation/fungi/neurospora_crassa/).…”