Pure culture of lichen forming fungus Evernia prunastri

The metagenome skimming approach, i.e. low coverage shotgun sequencing of multi-species assemblages and subsequent reconstruction of individual genomes is increasingly used for in-depth genomic characterization of eukaryotic communities. This approach is a promising tool for reconstructing genomes of facultative symbionts, such as lichen-forming fungi, from metagenomic reads. However, no study has so far tested accuracy and completeness of assemblies based on metagenomic sequences compared to assemblies based on pure culture strains of lichenized fungi. Here we assembled the genomes of Evernia prunastri and Pseudevernia furfuracea based on metagenomic sequences derived from whole lichen thalli. We extracted fungal contigs using two different taxonomic binning methods, and performed gene prediction on the fungal contig subsets. We then assessed quality and completeness of the metagenome-based assemblies using as reference genome assemblies which are based on pure culture strains of the two fungal species. Our comparison showed that we were able to reconstruct fungal genomes from uncultured lichen thalli, and also cover most of the gene space. Metagenome skimming is a viable tool to reconstruct fungal genomes from uncultured lichen thalli. It will facilitate genome mining, comparative (phylo)genomics, and populations genetics of lichen-forming fungi by circumventing the time-consuming, sometimes unfeasible, step of aposymbiotic cultivation.

Identifier
Source https://data.blue-cloud.org/search-details?step=~01298D1AC523FD9C5B2A34399534D1DC88FEB5AAB00
Metadata Access https://data.blue-cloud.org/api/collections/98D1AC523FD9C5B2A34399534D1DC88FEB5AAB00
Provenance
Instrument Illumina HiSeq 2000; ILLUMINA
Publisher Blue-Cloud Data Discovery & Access service; ELIXIR-ENA
Publication Year 2024
OpenAccess true
Contact blue-cloud-support(at)maris.nl
Representation
Discipline Marine Science
Spatial Coverage (-3.750W, 40.488S, -3.750E, 40.488N)