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Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Hyphal fusion and multigenomic structure

Nature volume 433, pages E3–E4 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Arising from: T. E. Pawlowska & J. W. Taylor Nature 427, 733–737 (2004); Pawlowska & Tylor reply Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (Glomeromycota) reproduce asexually, are multinucleate, and have high genetic variation within single cells. Pawlowska and Taylor1 find that genetic variation within AM fungal cells is not lost as a result of segregation, and they interpret this as evidence that the variation is present within each nucleus and that all nuclei within individual spores are genetically identical (that is, homokaryotic). Here we show that their empirical observations are also consistent with a distribution of genetic variation between nuclei within spores (that is, heterokaryotic), given that there is fusion of fungal hyphae. This analysis, together with complementary findings2,3,4, suggests that AM fungi have an unusual genomic structure in which multiple, genetically diverse nuclei are maintained within cells through remixing by hyphal fusion.

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Figure 1: Retention of genetic variants in arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, 47405, Indiana, USA

    James D. Bever

  2. Department of Statistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, 60637, Illinois, USA

    Mei Wang

Authors
  1. James D. Bever
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  2. Mei Wang
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Correspondence to James D. Bever.

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Bever, J., Wang, M. Hyphal fusion and multigenomic structure. Nature 433, E3–E4 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03294

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