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'Missing link' fungi found in Devon pond May 11, 2011 - BBC
Scientists have identified what may be the "missing link" connecting fungi to plants, animals and bacteria.
In the journal Nature, the researchers outline the structures and properties of a primitive type of fungus that they name cryptomycota, or "hidden fungi".
They suggest it raises new questions about how fungi evolved.
Samples used in the research were isolated by Dr Meredith Jones in a pond near her laboratory at Exeter University, UK.
"They are the oldest currently known of the fungal group and they represent the missing link between fungi and the rest of the kingdom of life," she told BBC News.
"DNA studies show that it was around this point that fungi diverged, so this will tell us a lot about how they evolved."
The discovery has already thrown up one surprising finding. The group lacks what until now scientists had thought was a defining feature of fungi: a rigid cell wall that is used to feed.
According to lead researcher Dr Thomas Richards from the Natural History Museum in London, text books on fungi may well need to be re-written.
"This new group uses a different strategy. We need to rethink how we classify fungi and we may need a better definition of what a fungus is," he said.
Fungal doubling
The indications are that cryptomycota is an incredibly diverse group, according to Dr Jones.
"From the mushrooms we find at the shops, the yeast that we use to bake bread and brew beer, to the mould that's growing in the bathroom - you can see how diverse the fungi we already know about are," she explained.
"This new group is just as diverse, and so its discovery doubles our currently known understanding of the fungal kingdom."
Researchers had known about this group of fungi from DNA-based techniques.
But the Nature-reported study is the first time that a team has learned what cryptomycota actually look like by using advanced microscopic techniques.
Deciphering the group's shape and structure should help scientists understand better what this particular group of fungi do in the environment.
Oldest, Oddest Fungi Finally Photographed
May 12, 2011 - Wired
Images of little dots, some wriggling a skinny tail, give scientists a
first glimpse of a vast swath of the oldest, and perhaps oddest, fungal
group alive today.
The first views suggest that unlike any other fungi known, these might
live as essentially naked cells without the rigid cell wall that
supposedly defines a fungus, says Tom Richards of the Natural History
Museum in London and the University of Exeter in England. He calls
these long-overlooked fungi cryptomycota, or “hidden fungi.” Of the
life stages seen so far, a swimming form and one attached to algal
cells, there’s no sign of the usual outer coat rich in a tough material
called chitin, Richards and his colleagues report online May 11 in
Nature.
“People are going to be excited,” predicts mycologist Tim James of the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who also studies an ancient group
of fungi.
Other research indicates the new group exists, but the current study
starts to reveal the biology. “The question is, is there another stage
in the life cycle that does have cell walls?” he says.
By analyzing DNA pulled directly from the environment, Richards and his
colleagues have confirmed that the hidden fungi belong on the same
ancient branch as a known genus named Rozella. Although researchers
have picked up DNA traces of fungi that didn’t quite fit in any group
for at least a decade, the organisms (so far) won’t grow in labs. That
in itself isn’t astounding for fungi, which can be difficult to culture.
As the researchers examined DNA sequences from databases, the ancient
group “just got bigger and bigger [in genetic diversity] until it was
as big as all previously known fungi,” Richards says.
Lakes in France, farms in the United States and sediment deep in the
sea have all yielded DNA sequences in this group. The one habitat it
doesn’t seem to like is open ocean, Richards says.
“The big message here is that most fungi and most fungal diversity
reside in fungi that have neither been collected nor cultivated,” says
John W. Taylor of the University of California, Berkeley.
Exeter team member Meredith Jones spotted the hard-to-detect organisms
by marking them with fluorescent tags. The trick revealed fungal cells
attached to algal cells as if parasitizing them. One of the big
questions about early fungi is whether they might have arisen from
“some kind of parasitic ancestor like Rozella,” says Rytas Vilgalys of
Duke University.
Interesting, yes. But loosening the definition of fungi to include
organisms without chitin walls could wreak havoc in the concept of that
group, objects Robert Lücking of the Field Museum in Chicago. “I would
actually conclude, based on the evidence, that these are not fungi,” he
says. Instead, they might be near relatives — an almost-fungus.