Projekt

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Horizontal gene transfer describes the exchange of genetic material across species boundaries, which contradicts the Mendelian laws of inheritance. While previously considered to be restricted to bacteria, current data suggest that horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is also common in fungi - organisms of greatest importance for ecosystems, medicine, or biotechnology. HGT might have contributed to the emergence of new pathogenic fungal species and could drive their adaptation to new environments. The project will test the novel hypothesis that HGT in fungi occurs through cell-cell fusion between different species following the laboratory's promising preliminary results and by conducting laborious mass approach experiments with different fungal species. The project has the potential to identify for the first time the cellular mechanism enabling interspecies inheritance in fungi. These results would broadly impact our understanding on how fungi evolve and quickly adapt to changing environments, which could eventually result in new strategies of controlling and exploiting these important but so far understudied organisms.

• Prof. Dr. Andre Fleißner

  Technische Universität Braunschweig
  Fakultät für Lebenswissenschaften
  Institut für Genetik
  Braunschweig