Functional genomics in Schizophyllum commune: leveraging the diversity in this hypervariable fungus to understand mushroom development

Projektinformationen

Mushroomics

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 716132

DOI

10.3030/716132

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 29 November 2016

Startdatum 1 Januar 2017

Enddatum 31 Dezember 2022

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 1 500 000,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 1 500 000,00

Koordiniert durch

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Mushroomics (Functional genomics in Schizophyllum commune: leveraging the diversity in this hypervariable fungus to understand mushroom development)

Berichtszeitraum: 2021-07-01 bis 2022-12-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

Mushrooms are the reproductive structures of certain species of fungi, and they are a nutritious and sustainable food source for a growing world population. At the beginning of the project, very little was known about how mushrooms form. Therefore, the aim of this project was to gain more insight in the regulation of mushroom development: how does the fungus decide where to form a mushroom, and which genes are involved in this process?
Having concluded the project, we now understand mushroom development much better. We identified over 15 important regulators of mushroom development. Moreover, we have developed several techniques that will accelerate the study of mushrooms in the future.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

Most mushroom-forming fungi are very difficult to work with in the lab, since they grow very slowly or because they are not genetically accessible. For this reason we use a model species for mushroom development, called Schizophyllum commune. In the course of the project, we developed several new methods to efficiently study the genes of mushrooms. This includes a CRISPR/Cas9 method to edit the genome of mushrooms, as well as an approach to study the structure and regulation of the genome.
Using these techniques, we have now identified over 15 regulators of mushroom development. We now better understand how fungi detect environmental signals, and how they process this information, allowing them to decide where to form a mushroom. Furthermore, we discovered that individual strains of a species of mushrooms can be genetically very diverse, which is an important new insight into the evolution of these mushroom-forming fungi.
In conclusion, we now understand mushroom development much better. Next, our results may be used to improve the efficiency of mushroom cultivation, and may also allow us to commercially grow species that are currently unculturable.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

Having concluded the project, we now understand mushroom development much better. We identified over 15 important regulators of mushroom development. Moreover, we have developed several techniques that will accelerate the study of mushrooms in the future.

The mushroom-forming fungus Schizophyllum commune, which we use to study mushroom development