Abstract : Environmental DNA surveys reveal that most fungal diversity represents uncultured species. We sequenced the genomes of eight uncultured species across the fungal tree of life using a new single-cell genomics pipeline. We show that, despite a large variation in genome and gene space recovery from each single amplified genome (SAG), ≥90% can be recovered by combining multiple SAGs. SAGs provide robust placement for early-diverging lineages and infer a diploid ancestor of fungi. Early-diverging fungi share metabolic deficiencies and show unique gene expansions correlated with parasitism and unculturability. Single-cell genomics holds great promise in exploring fungal diversity, life cycles and metabolic potential.
Steven Ahrendt, C Alisha Quandt, Doina Ciobanu, Alicia Clum, Asaf Salamov, et al.. Leveraging single-cell genomics to expand the fungal tree of life. Nature Microbiology, Nature Publishing Group, 2018, 3 (12), pp.1417-1428. ⟨10.1038/s41564-018-0261-0⟩. ⟨hal-02094482⟩