Project description
Rethinking the fungal germline
In animals, the germline is made up of cells that pass genetic information to the next generation. These cells are set aside early in development. In fungi, the germline seems to form much later. However, new genomic evidence from the basidiomycete Marasmius oreades suggests that fungi may also reserve their germline early. This indicates an evolutionary similarity across distant lineages. The ERC-funded FunGerm project will explore this idea by studying M. oreades fairy rings as a natural long-term evolution experiment. Researchers will combine genomic, developmental, and evolutionary methods to map fungal cell lines, investigate how germline segregation works, and assess mutation dynamics. This work is expected to reshape our understanding of how development and evolution are connected.
Objective
The FunGerm-project aims to investigate the phenomenon of an early sequestered germline in the fungi. As of today, it is well known that in unitary animals the germline is defined early during development, while in fungi, plants, and other metazoans, the current dogma is that the germline is defined much later in development, meaning that mutations that have accumulated over growth can enter the germline. Recent, and yet unpublished, whole-genome-sequencing data in my group show the unexpected pattern of an early sequestration of the germline in the basidiomycete fungus Marasmius oreades, suggesting convergence in evolution of this key trait among major eukaryote lineages. M. oreades grows in fairy rings: circular, underground mycelia common in lawns and grasslands across the northern hemisphere. At the edge of the ring, the annual, sexual, fruiting bodies (mushrooms) develop from the mycelium. In recent years, we have developed the system as a natural, long-term evolution experiment to study the rise and fate of new mutations over sexual generations. With an ERC Advanced grant we will be able to use this system to fully explore the finding of an early sequestered germline, and also expand it to identify the breadth of occurrence across the fungal kingdom. Specifically, I propose to use a wide range of approaches and M. oreades as model organism to investigate: I) The spatial distribution of the somatic and germline cell-lines in mycelia, II) The mechanism determining and controlling germline segregation, and III) The mutation rate and spectra of the different cell lines. Furthermore, we aim to investigate IV) the prevalence of an early germline sequestration across basidiomycetes and other fungi. With the FunGerm-project we will thoroughly test if, and how, an early germline sequestration has evolved multiple times independently, in different eukaryote kingdoms, and thereby empirically contribute to the conceptual link between development and evolution.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology mycology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics mutation
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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10691 Stockholm
Sweden
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