"Of Chance and Necessity: Novel Fungal-Algal Mutualisms Created by Niche Engineering," will be presented by Erik Hom of the University of Mississippi at 4 p.m., Sept. 17 in E103 Beadle Center. The seminar is free and open to the public.
Mutualistic symbioses are widespread and shape the evolution of genomes and ecosystems. Despite their ubiquity and importance, we understand surprisingly little about how such symbioses arise. In part, the dearth of experimentally tractable systems has made it difficult to address fundamental questions about how symbiotic relationships arise, evolve, and are consolidated. Inspired by lichens, symbiotic composites involving fungi and algae, Hom devised a suite of obligate mutualisms based on a simple carbon:nitrogen metabolic exchange, with the prototype being between the model eukaryotes, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
Hom will describe the logic of his approach and share some results exploring the robustness, dynamics and phylogenetically breadth of this capacity for mutualistism among free-living fungi and green algae.
The Beadle Center is located at 1901 Vine Street. The complete schedule of seminars may be found at http://biotech.unl.edu/.
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/inu2