Abstract Detail

Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Stajich, Jason [1], Carter-House, Derreck [1], Valencia, Omar [1], Lovett, Brian [2], Macias, Angie [2], Kasson, Matt [2], Chang, Ying [4], Spatafora, Joey [4], Grigoriev, Igor [3], Uehling, Jessie [4].

Discovery and Analysis of Bacteria endosymbionts of Mucoromycota Fungi from low coverage genome sequences.

Interactions between Bacteria and Fungi are ancient and notable in their function and ecological breadth. The zygomycete Fungi in the phylum Mucoromycota in particular form symbiotic relationships with Burkholderia and Mollicutes Bacteria.   Through efforts of the Zygolife, 1000 Fungal Genomes, and other sequencing projects we have generated and analyzed low coverage genomes from more than 650 Mucoromycota strains from culture collections, clinical, plant-associated, and environmental isolations. Our analyses have identified and assembled metagenome-associated genomes from the Bacteria found in the datasets to characterize the frequency of these interactions and genomic content associated with host lineages. Analysis of the evolutionary relationships of the endosymbiotic bacteria found that they often mirrored those of the host fungi indicating these fungal-bacteria associations are ancient.   Comparative genomics in some of these fungi have established that the interactions between the fungus-bacteria and sometimes plant or animal hosts involve the trade of primary and secondary metabolites (SM) and use of secretion systems. The presence of endosymbionts in Mucoromycota have strong impacts on fungal transcriptional regulation, metabolism, cell wall composition, and the expression of transmembrane sensors. The endobacterial secondary metabolites have also been shown to influence interactions plant pathogenic fungi have with plants. While the majority of research has been focused on plant-associated Mucoromycota, endosymbiont presence has recently been recognized in human fungal pathogenic species, although their role in pathogenesis is yet to be established. Using these data we evaluated the frequency of endosymbionts in Mucoromycota fungi. We found these interactions are stable even in long held isolates from culture collections and spanned isolates collected from plants, animals, dung, soil, invertebrates and environmental collections. Using low cost and low coverage genome sequencing we have generated large scale inventory of these fungi to support phylogenetic reconstruction of their evolutionary relationships. We developed an automated pipeline for assembly, annotation, and metagenome processing to separate fungal and bacteria contigs and classify their taxonomy. Comparison of the secondary metabolism clusters among the Bacteria found that fungal-associated lineages typically have more (7 on average) SM clusters than those in closely related free-living strains (typically 3 per isolate). Our analyses of these fungi and bacteria genomes are helping understand the history of this symbiosis and the relative importance of these relationships and the influence of the metabolism in the plant and animal host interactions.

Related Links:
Zygolife project
1kFG

1 - University Of California-Riverside, Dept Microbiology and Plant Pathology, 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA, 92521, United States, 951-827-2363
2 - West Virgina University, Division of Plant and Soil Sciences, Morgantown, WV, 26506, USA
3 - US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
4 - Oregon State University, Botany and Plant Pathology, 4575 SW Research Way, Corvallis, OR, 97333, USA

Keywords:
Mucoromycota
bacteria
symbiosis
genomics
phylogenomics
Comparative genomics
zygomycete.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: SYMB2, Symbioses: Plant, Animal and Microbe Interactions 2
Location: /
Date: Tuesday, July 20th, 2021
Time: 12:30 PM(EDT)
Number: SYMB2001
Abstract ID:1089
Candidate for Awards:None