Leho Tedersoo, Professor of Mycorrhizal Studies at the University of Tartu, has received the Advanced Grant from the European Research Council to systematise and describe members of the 95% majority of previously unclassified microscopic fungi, and other eukaryotic organisms not yet included in the current tree of life system. Using the kingdom Fungi as an example, a new system for DNA-based classification of organisms can then be created.
More than 160,000 species of fungi have been described worldwide, which can be assessed based on their morphological characteristics. It is estimated, however, that there are two to three million species in the fungi kingdom, many of them invisible to the naked eye. The majority of these live in the soil, playing crucial roles in ecosystem functioning, such as decomposing organic matter and supporting plants in nutrient uptake. There are also some species whose spread we want to restrict, as they live as parasites in plants or animals.
READ MORE: Researchers predict climate change-driven reduction in beneficial plant microbes
READ MORE: New insights into Cortinarius: Novel taxa from subtropical China
Current methods for describing and communicating fungal species have proven insufficient. As a result, a lot of them are not covered in the tree of life that describes the evolution and taxonomic relationships of living species. What has not been described is really hard to protect or, in the case of pathogens, to prevent systematically.
Undescribed biodiversity
Tedersoo’s research group, which operates in the Mycology and Microbiology Center at the University of Tartu, focuses on microscopic soil fungi. Over the past 15 years, they have collected tens of thousands of soil and leaf samples during global biodiversity research. In the last five years, they have also taken water and household dust samples, the DNA information of which often indicates that there are species and deep phylogenetic lineages that have never been described yet.
“This can partly be explained by the fact that the samples came from some tropical region where no one had collected them before. However, very common microscopic fungi often occur in many places around us but cannot be cultured in a Petri dish and, therefore, cannot be suitably described using classical taxonomy methods. This leads to a direct need to devise a new system that would allow us to talk about, distinguish and systematise non-cultivable microscopic fungi,” said Tedersoo.
Latest methods
Tedersoo’s group plans to apply the latest methods of molecular biology and genomics, which make it possible to obtain information necessary for species identification even from a single cell, if necessary.
This is particularly useful in environmental monitoring, where environmental DNA samples are increasingly used to provide insights into, for example, the species living in a body of water based on the genetic material found in a water sample. In this field, a good partner is the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, where novel methods are used and members of Tedersoo’s research group are trained to build relevant laboratory capabilities in Tartu for future collaboration.
Revolution in species description
Based on the obtained DNA data, researchers are working out principles for a new taxonomic system. The question is how to include the existing taxonomic data in the new system to avoid the emergence of two parallel approaches to species description.
Tedersoo acknowledges that the task is a very time-consuming , but he remains hopeful that within the next ten years, it will be possible to describe representatives of very large and widespread groups of microscopic fungi at the phylum, order, or family level, which would help establish the basic structure of the fungal evolutionary tree.
The Advanced Grant received from the European Research Council is intended for leading top-level scientists who have achieved outstanding research results over the last ten years. The project “Phylogenetic taxonomy and classification of fungi” runs until the end of February 2030 and its budget is €3.3 million.
No comments yet