A project undertaken at The University of Melbourne, and supervised by A/Prof Alexander Idnurm.
The primary objective of this research was to highlight the paucity of our knowledge about the biodiversity of microbes in Australia and then address that gap. Australia is particularly renowned for its fauna and flora. However, despite the fact that the fungi are far more diverse than plants and animals, very few endemic Australian species have been described or their distributions explored in detail. Fungi support the existence of our larger and more iconic organisms, such as through interactions with roots of plants, as sources of food, and underlying nutrient cycling. Prior sporadic sampling of fungi from various environments suggests that there are many unknown species of fungi in Australia; however, a suitable ‘model system’ that could be used to estimate how many species are yet to be discovered has not been available.
The research focused on a genus of early-diverging fungi, Backusella. The outcomes were the isolation of hundreds of new strains of this genus. They were identified to species levels primarily using DNA sequencing approaches. This enabled the ability to map species distributions on a broad scale into four eastern states, showing some species appear geographically localised, some across states and some of global distribution. Over a dozen new species were identified and described, including the discovery even of a new genus related to Backusella. A full draft of their genomes was generated that will be made available for future studies.
The research has and will lead to impacts on society beyond the new knowledge gained. The project enabled the training of undergraduate students on specific research projects. To define new species required the involvement of materials from outside Australia and has led to the development of collaborations from Australia to those exploring these fungi in Brazil, Germany, South Korea, Sweden, and USA, thereby placing the outcomes of the research into an international context.