{"id":5943,"date":"2017-12-12T11:58:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T16:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5943"},"modified":"2017-12-12T11:58:06","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T16:58:06","slug":"how-the-worlds-largest-fungus-grew-to-its-humongous-proportions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/how-the-worlds-largest-fungus-grew-to-its-humongous-proportions\/","title":{"rendered":"How the world’s largest fungus grew to its humongous proportions "},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Armillaria

Armillaria fungus (Pixabay\/CC0)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

One of the largest terrestrial living organisms, an\u00a0Armillaria ostoyae<\/em>\u00a0specimen dubbed the ‘Humongous Fungus’, covers almost 9 kilometres and weighs 544 tonnes.\u00a0Armillaria<\/em>\u00a0fungi live mostly underground, which gives them the needed space to grow to epic proportions. A team of scientists set out to pinpoint the genetic mechanism that allows this fungus group to grow. They sequenced genomes of four\u00a0Armillaria<\/em>\u00a0species (including one similar to the Humongous Fungus). Their findings suggest that the\u00a0Armillaria\u00a0<\/em>species have expanded gene families associated with several pathogenicity-related genes and enzymes that degrade plant tissue. The authors also identify a wide array of genes in rhizomorphs associated with their role of dispersal and colonization of new plants. This research can help slow down the spread of\u00a0Armillaria<\/em>\u00a0rhizomorphs and fight the root-rot caused by the fungi.<\/p>\n

Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gy\u00f6rgy Sipos, Arun N. Prasanna, Mathias C. Walter, Eoin O\u2019Connor, Bal\u00e1zs B\u00e1lint, Krisztina Krizs\u00e1n, Brigitta Kiss, Jaqueline Hess, Torda Varga, Jason Slot, Robert Riley, Bettina B\u00f3ka, Daniel Rigling, Kerrie Barry, Juna Lee, Sirma Mihaltcheva, Kurt LaButti, Anna Lipzen, Rose Waldron, Nicola M. Moloney, Christoph Sperisen, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kredics, Csaba V\u00e1gv\u00f6lgyi, Andrea Patrignani, David Fitzpatrick, Istv\u00e1n Nagy, Sean Doyle, James B. Anderson, Igor V. Grigoriev, Ulrich G\u00fcldener, Martin M\u00fcnsterk\u00f6tter & L\u00e1szl\u00f3 G. Nagy<\/p>\n

Corresponding author:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gy\u00f6rgy Sipos, University of Sopron, Sopron, Hungary, Email:\u00a0gyoergy.sipos@wsl.ch<\/a><\/p>\n

Canadian author:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

James Anderson, Department of Biology, University of Toronto, ON, Email:\u00a0jb.anderson@utoronto.ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Original paper<\/a> published in Nature Ecology & Evolution<\/em> on October 30, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the largest terrestrial living organisms, an\u00a0Armillaria ostoyae\u00a0specimen dubbed the ‘Humongous Fungus’, covers almost 9 kilometres and weighs 544 tonnes.\u00a0Armillaria\u00a0fungi live mostly underground, which gives them the needed space to grow to epic proportions. A team of scientists set out to pinpoint the genetic mechanism that allows this fungus group to grow. They sequenced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1328,3223,3224,3225],"class_list":["post-5943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-fungus","tag-humongous-fungus","tag-mushrooms","tag-rhizomorphs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Armillaria-mushroom.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1xR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5945,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5943\/revisions\/5945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}