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The genetic diversity underlying the mating system of shelf fungi

• zasdffaa 4y ago
  Interesting to me though a bit short. Extract "Some common mushrooms likely have more than 17,000 sexes, researchers report March 31 in PLOS Genetics. [...] While scientists have long suspected that certain species of fungi have thousands or even tens of thousands of biological sexes, the new research employed cutting edge genetic tools to confirm the extreme diversity of sexes in Trichaptum mushrooms"
  • monetus 4y ago
    And this - "The international team of researchers decided to examine species in this genus because they had been studied by scientists previously and were easy to grow in the lab." There are so many fungi that haven't had their taxonomy studied let alone their genetics; so much to learn. "The pace of advances in DNA sequencing are just mind boggling,” says Joseph Heitman, a geneticist and infectious disease expert at Duke University who wasn’t involved in the study but has investigated fungal mating strategies before. “This kind of study would have been cost and time prohibitive even five years ago.”