Chinese Cordyceps, known in Chinese as "DongChong XiaCao", is a parasitic complex of a fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) and a caterpillar. The current study explored the endogenetic fungal communities inhabiting Chinese Cordyceps. Samples were collected from five different geographical regions of Qinghai and Tibet, and the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer-1 sequences from each samp...

BACKGROUND Xeric forests dominated by two tree species, Scutia buxifolia (Rhamnaceae) and Celtis tala (Ulmacea), are temperate, semi-deciduous wooded communities that represent the most abundant woodlands on the eastern plains of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. The district of Magdalena has one of the most well-preserved native-forest areas, with an environmental heterogeneity that gives rise...

Surveys of carbon:nitrogen:phosphorus ratios are available now for major groups of biota and for various aquatic and terrestrial biomes. However, while fungi play an important role in nutrient cycling in ecosystems, relatively little is known about their C:N:P stoichiometry and how it varies across taxonomic groups, functional guilds, and environmental conditions. Here we present the first syst...

The known enzymes that open the s-triazine ring, the cyanuric acid hydrolases, have been confined almost exclusively to the kingdom Bacteria and are all homologous members of the rare cyanuric acid hydrolase/barbiturase protein family. In the present study, a filamentous fungus, Sarocladium sp. strain CA, was isolated from soil by enrichment culturing using cyanuric acid as the sole source of n...

Previous studies have revealed inconsistent correlations between fungal diversity and plant/soil properties from local to global scales. Here, we investigated the internal relationships between soil fungal diversity and plant/soil properties on the Loess Plateau following vegetation restoration, using Illumina sequencing of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region for fungal identificati...

Dating of fungal divergences with molecular clocks thus far has yielded highly inconsistent results. The origin of fungi was estimated at between 660 million and up to 2.15 billion y ago, and the divergence of the two major lineages of higher fungi, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, at between 390 million y and up to 1.5 billion y ago. Assuming that these inconsistencies stem from various causes, w...

Approximately 1,000 species of the fungal phyla Microsporidia, Chytridiomycota, Entomophthoromycota (order: Entomophthorales), Basidiomycota, and Ascomycota are known to infect and kill insects [1]. Of these, species such as Beauveria bassiana andMetarhizium robertsii (Ascomycota: Hypocreales) are well-studied models for exploring the mechanisms of fungus–insect physiological interactions, and ...

The advent of complex multicellularity (CM) was a pivotal event in the evolution of animals, plants and fungi. In the fungal Ascomycota, CM is based on hyphal filaments and arose in the Pezizomycotina. The genus Neolecta defines an enigma: phylogenetically placed in a related group containing mostly yeasts, Neolecta nevertheless possesses Pezizomycotina-like CM. Here we sequence the Neolecta ir...