Extremotolerant Black Fungi from Rocks and Lichens

Unveiling the Hidden Diversity of Rock-Inhabiting Fungi: Chaetothyriales from China

“…RIF produce a minimal array of metabolites, only those for essential survival—for example, extracellular polymeric substances [ 79 ], and, in general, they are poor antibiotic producers [ 86 ]. Presently, the origin, evolution, and mechanisms of stress adaptation of RIF are beginning to be understood comprehensively by a combination of genome, transcriptome, and proteome studies [ 26 , 87 , 88 ]. Although transcriptomic and metabolic analyses may explain details about their differential gene expressions and metabolic activity variations under stress, in order to reveal the survival strategies of RIF, further interesting researches are needed—for instance, how rapidly the transcriptional regulation initiated responding to fluctuating hydration conditions and how to resume metabolic activities after long periods of metabolic suspense undergoing extremes [ 88 ].…”

Analysing indoor mycobiomes through a large‐scale citizen science study in Norway

“…b Relevant traits: osmotolerant fungi (O) (Flannigan & Miller, 2011;Gostinčar et al, 2018), allergenic fungi (A) (Esch et al, 2001;Yamamoto et al, 2012), skin-associated fungi (S) (Findley et al, 2013), material-colonizing fungi (M) (Andersen et al, 2011;Flannigan & Miller, 2011), plant pathogenic fungi (P), rock-inhabiting fungi (R) and lichen-forming fungi (L) (Ametrano et al, 2019;Gostinčar et al, 2018). c Relative abundance as proportion of the total number of rarefied reads.…”

“…In agreement with previous studies in the built environment, which mainly described air-and dust-borne communities, the mycobiomes in studied houses were clearly dominated by ascomycetes (⁓70%) with Capnodiales and Eurotiales as major orders in abundance, corroborating our hypothesis H2. These orders are well known for their stress tolerance; Capnodiales (with Cladosporioum as the dominant genus in our data set) is particularly rich in extremotolerant species, including saprobes, plant pathogens, endophytes, epiphytes and rock-inhabiting fungi (Ametrano et al, 2019;Crous et al, 2009), while Eurotiales contains many xerophilic fungi (especially Aspergillus and Penicillium species) that are able to grow on substrates with low water activity (aw ≤ 0.85) like household dust (Flannigan & Miller, 2011;Pettersson & Leong, 2011). Interestingly, we observed a distinct difference in the overall distribution of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota; the former was to a higher extent connected to areas with high annual precipitation and longer growing season, while basidiomycetes were more prevalent in continental areas with high degree of seasonality and high snow cover during winter.…”

A New Extremotolerant Ecotype of the Fungus Pseudotaeniolina globosa Isolated from Djoser Pyramid, Memphis Necropolis, Egypt

“…RIF survive under extreme conditions and grow to form micro-colonial fungal life forms (MCF) [ 52 ]. The selective pressure of such harsh conditions directed the evolution of their genomes to develop tolerant alleles through adaptive genetic variation and accumulation of beneficial mutations; the genetic pools of those organisms deviated significantly from sister fungal lineages to overcome the rock surface conditions (e.g., high UV radiation and temperatures) [ 53 ]. For instance, the highly concentrated black pigments in the MCF cell walls serve as a UV-protective substance (e.g., [ 54 ]).…”