Fungi from Extreme Environments: Genome Sequences and Beyond

Fungi have been documented to inhabit nearly all habitats on earth including some of the most extreme environmental and physico-chemical conditions. The extremophilic and extremotolerant fungi which thrive in harsh conditions include specialists which inhabit a narrow though extreme range of temperature, pH, or aridity, and generalists which are documented in often broader environmental conditions but are successfully in the extremes. Studies of these fungi have been driven by culture-based work documenting the phenotypes and capabilities in different growth conditions, genotyping and genomic sequencing to catalog gene content and genetic variation. Ongoing research is working to uncover the basic biology, unravel novel molecular adaptations to understand their evolution, and develop biotechnological applications from these resources and knowledge.