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Bartheletia confirmed as basal in Agaricomycotina
Basidia of Bartheletia paradoxa. Photo: Edith Stabentheiner.
Bartheletia paradoxa is a remarkable basidiomycete only known from fallen leaves of Gingko biloba, and referred to as a “living fossil” because of its association with this tree genus, which is known as a fossil from 270 million years ago, and its peculiar septal structure, basidia, and position at the basal branching of Agaricomycotina (Scheuer et al. 2008). Just what the position might be was unresolved in the original nucSSU DNA sequence analyses, but now a more comprehensive phylogenomic approach using a wide range of highly conserved genes by Mishra et al. (2018) has provided a greatly improved resolution. The new study used 67 highly conserved orthologous loci, which were used in a network analysis. Then, after removing poorly resolving genes, data based on 26 gave strong (but not maximum) support to this fungus being at the base of the Agaricomycotina and sister
Maximum likelihood tree based 26 of the 67 orthologous loci studied showing the position of Bartheletia paradoxa. Adapted from Mishra et al. (2018).
to all other members of the subphylum, and separate from the Pucciniomycotina and Usilaginomycotina which together form a sister group to the whole of the Agaricomycotina. The authors speculate that the lack of stronger support may be attributable to a rapid radiation related to the advent of basidian the last common ancestor. The new class and ordinal names Bartheletiomycetes and Bartheletiales are formally introduced here for this weird fungus.
Mishra B, Choi Y-J, Thines M (2018) phylogenomics of Bartheletia paradoxa reveals its basal position in Agaricomycotina and that the early evolutionary history of basidiomycetes was rapid and probably not strictly bifurcating. Mycological Progress 17: 333–341. Scheuer C, Bauer R, Lutz M, Stabentheiner E, Mel’nik A, Grube M (2008) Bartheletia paradoxa is a living fossil on Gingko biloba leaf litter with a unique septal structure in the Basidiomycota. Mycological Research 112: 1265–1279.
Mycorrhizal origins and functioning The December 2018 issue of the New Phytologist, is a 399-page open-access special issue devoted to “Cross-scale integration of mycorrhizal function” (81 (4): 937–1336; https://nph.onlinelibrary. wiley.com/toc/14698137/2018/220/4). There are 38 items in the issue including a mixture of review articles, research papers, commentaries, letters, and viewpoints. It is partly based on discussions stimulated by two international mycorrhizal conferences held in 2017 in Prague and Toulouse, supplemented by other contributions solicited by the eight co-editors of the issue, lead by Francis M. Martin. This is definitely
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a “must” not only for all mycorrhizal researchers, whether endo- or ecto-, but also for all interested in the evolution and functioning of symbiotic relationships from the palaeontological to the genomic levels. Workers whose primary interest is mycorrhizal fungi will want to see the whole issue, and here I will draw att
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