The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms

Smith, Myron L.; Bruhn, Johann N.; Anderson, James B.

doi:10.1038/356428a0

Cited by 607 publications

(359 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…5). Further expansion to 19,272 genes was inferred for the MRCA of A. solidipes, A. ostoyae, A. epistipes and A. gallica (3,192 duplications, 607 losses), although the highly fragmented A. mellea assembly might cause some duplications to map to this instead of the preceding node.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Individuals of Armillaria can reach immense sizes and include the 'humongous fungus' , one of the largest terrestrial organisms on Earth 3 , measuring up to 965 hectares and 600 tons 4 , and can display a mutation rate ≅ 3 orders of magnitude lower than most filamentous fungi 5 . Individuals reach this immense size via growing rhizomorphs, dark mycelial strings 1-4 mm wide that allow the fungus to bridge gaps between food sources or host plants 1,6 (hence the name shoestring root rot).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Genome expansion and lineage-specific genetic innovations in the forest pathogenic fungi Armillaria

et al. 2017

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T he genus Armillaria causes root rot disease in both gymnoand angiosperms, in forests, parks, and even vineyards in more than 500 host plant species 1 across the world. Most Armillaria species are facultative necrotrophs, which, after colonizing and killing the root cambium, transition to a saprobic phase, decomposing dead woody tissues of the host. As saprotrophs, Armillaria spp. are white rot (WR) fungi, which can efficiently decompose all components of plant cell walls, including lignin, (hemi-)cellulose and pectin 2 . They produce fleshy fruiting bodies (honey mushrooms) that appear in large clumps around infected plants and produce sexual spores. The vegetative phase of Armillaria is predominantly diploid rather than dikaryotic like most basidiomycetes.Individuals of Armillaria can reach immense sizes and include the 'humongous fungus' , one of the largest terrestrial organisms on Earth 3 , measuring up to 965 hectares and 600 tons 4 , and can display a mutation rate ≅ 3 orders of magnitude lower than most filamentous fungi 5 . Individuals reach this immense size via growing rhizomorphs, dark mycelial strings 1-4 mm wide that allow the fungus to bridge gaps between food sources or host plants 1,6 (hence the name shoestring root rot). Rhizomorphs develop through the aggregation and coordinated parallel growth of hyphae, similar to some fruiting body tissues 7,8 . As migratory and exploratory organs, rhizomorphs can grow approximately 1 m yr −1 and cross several metres underground in search for new hosts, although roles in uptake and longrange translocation of nutrients have also been proposed 1,9,10 . Root contact by rhizomorphs is the main mode of infection by the fungus, which makes the prevention of recurrent infection in Armillariacontaminated areas particularly difficult 1 . Despite their huge impact on forestry, horticulture and agriculture, the genetics of the pathogenicity of Armillaria species is poorly understood. The only -omics data published so far have highlighted a substantial repertoire of plant cell wall degrading enzymes (PCWDE) and secreted proteins, among others, in A. mellea and A. solidipes 11,12 , while analyses of the genomes of other pathogenic basidiomycetes (such as Moniliophthora 13,14 , Heterobasidion 15 and Rhizoctonia 16 ) identified genes coding for PCWDEs, secreted and effector proteins or secondary metabolism (SM) as putative pathogenicity factors. However, the lifecycle and unique dispersal strategy of Armillaria prefigure other evolutionary routes to pathogenicity, which, along with other potential genomic factors (such as transposable elements 17 ) are not yet known.Here, we investigate genome evolution and the origin of pathogenicity in Armillaria using comparative genomics, transcriptomics

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Genome expansion and lineage-specific genetic innovations in the forest pathogenic fungi Armillaria

et al. 2017

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“…This relatively new technique offers advantages with respect to the amount of material needed and the fact that nothing need be known about the genomic organization of the organism. The technique has generated useful results in the identification of unique individuals (Smith et al, 1992), detection of genetic variability (Chalmers et a!., 1992;Landry et a!., 1993), race identification (Crowhurst et al, 1991) and generation of linkage maps (Paran et al, 1991). The technique is becoming widely used (see Hedrick 1992 for a review of various current applications), and a review of potential applications has been given by Hadrys et al (1992).…”

Section: It Is Probable That L Bonariensis Arrived In Newmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geographical origin of an introduced insect pest, Listronotus bonariensis (Kuschel), determined by RAPD analysis

et al. 1994

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The Argentine stem weevil, Listronotus bonariensis (Kuschel) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), is an important introduced pasture pest in New Zealand. In this study geographical populations of this species were analysed using polymerase chain reaction-based randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), in an attempt to determine the geographical origin of the pest. Morphologically indistinguishable individuals were collected from nine South American, five New Zealand and one Australian populations. Ten primers were screened for usefulness, two of which revealed significant, scorable polymorphisms between these populations. The results indicated that the sampled New Zealand L. bonariensis populations originated from the east coast of South America.

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“…In fungi, gene flow is accomplished by microscopic spore dispersal. Some individual thalli of mushrooms species are as large as whales or trees (Smith et al 1992), but almost all fungi produce spores (meiotic and mitotic propagules), most of which are ca 10 mm in their longest dimension. Even larger spores have been shown to be capable of long-distance dispersal; for example, mitospores of the plant pathogen Puccinia graminis (not smaller than 26!16 mm; Cummins 1971) can travel from South Africa to Australia (Watson & De Sousa 1983), and mitospores of another plant pathogen, Blumeria graminis (not smaller than 24!12 mm; Braun 1995) can cross the North Sea from continental Europe to Britain (Brown et al 1991).…”

Section: The Fungi a Kingdom Of Microbial Eukaryotesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eukaryotic microbes, species recognition and the geographic limits of species: examples from the kingdom Fungi

Taylor

Turner

Townsend

et al. 2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

304

249

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The claim that eukaryotic micro-organisms have global geographic ranges, constituting a significant departure from the situation with macro-organisms, has been supported by studies of morphological species from protistan kingdoms. Here, we examine this claim by reviewing examples from another kingdom of eukaryotic microbes, the Fungi. We show that inferred geographic range of a fungal species depends upon the method of species recognition. While some fungal species defined by morphology show global geographic ranges, when fungal species are defined by phylogenetic species recognition they are typically shown to harbour several to many endemic species. We advance two non-exclusive reasons to explain the perceived difference between the size of geographic ranges of microscopic and macroscopic eukaryotic species when morphological methods of species recognition are used. These reasons are that microbial organisms generally have fewer morphological characters, and that the rate of morphological change will be slower for organisms with less elaborate development and fewer cells. Both of these reasons result in fewer discriminatory morphological differences between recently diverged lineages. The rate of genetic change, moreover, is similar for both large and small organisms, which helps to explain why phylogenetic species of large and small organisms show a more similar distribution of geographic ranges. As a consequence of the different rates in fungi of genetic and morphological changes, genetic isolation precedes a recognizable morphological change. The final step in speciation, reproductive isolation, also follows genetic isolation and may precede morphological change.

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The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms

Cited by 607 publications

References 23 publications

Genome expansion and lineage-specific genetic innovations in the forest pathogenic fungi Armillaria

Genome expansion and lineage-specific genetic innovations in the forest pathogenic fungi Armillaria

Geographical origin of an introduced insect pest, Listronotus bonariensis (Kuschel), determined by RAPD analysis

Eukaryotic microbes, species recognition and the geographic limits of species: examples from the kingdom Fungi

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