We examine one of the big questions in biology, the genetic bases of major evolutionary transitions. One such transition is the evolution of multicellularity, which enabled the emergence of complex organisms from unicellular ones, including animals, plants as well as fungi. In fungi, multicellular growth is an economically important trait for two reasons. First, hyphal growth is a main pathogenicity factor of plant and animal pathogens, so understanding the evolutionary origins and genetic bases of hyphal growth will have potential implications in the fight against fungal infections. Second, complex multicellular fruiting bodies of fungi, known as mushrooms, represent an important and sustainable food source, which offers potential practical applications of the results generated during this project. Complex multicellularity of fruiting bodies is similar to the complexity level animals have reached also, and it follows that understanding the governing principles of fruiting body evolution may have implications for understanding other complex organisms also. The overall aims of the project are understanding the evolutionary / genetic origins of fungal multicellularity and placing fungi on the map of major evolutionary transitions. We focus on both hyphal growth and fruiting body development and identify key genetic changes by comparative genomic approaches, that allow us to look into the past and reconstruct the sequence of genetic events that accompanied the transition from unicellular to multicellular, as well as gene expression profiling (transcriptomic methods), which allow real-time readouts of gene expression (activity) changes during the formation of fruiting bodies.
