FunFun: ITS‐based functional annotator of fungal communities

Abstract

Natural fungal communities are characterized by a high diversity of unique biochemical pathways, including the biosynthesis of antimicrobial substances, organic acids, and even toxins (Branco, 2019). At the same time, individual fungi from one community might significantly differ from each other in terms of their functional capabilities (Wisecaver et al., 2014). This is due to differences in gene content.Functional capabilities are of great interest to modern industrial biotechnology (Chergui et al., 2021;Habibi et al., 2021;Li et al., 2020). Also, information about gene content can be useful to solve ecological problems such as the bioconversion of solid waste (Chilakamarry et al., 2022) or caffeine utilization (Zhou et al., 2018).To get a more complete picture of the functional capabilities of the fungi under study, functional annotation of whole genome assemblies is used.