EVOGENE seminar: Inger Skrede

A species is the basic biological unit of classifying nature. However, the biological process that has generated all species, called speciation, has mainly been studied in a few animal and plant groups. Far less is known about how species evolve in microorganisms, as fungi. Although the fungal kingdom is assumed to be one of the most species-rich eukaryotic groups, with wide economic and ecological importance, relatively little is known about how new fungal species arise. Fungi have several unique features in their life cycles and life history traits, with their long-lived haploid and dikaryotic phase, high dispersal ability, morphological simplicity and absence of obvious behaviour, they may differ from animals and plants in speciation mechanisms. Fortunately, most fungal species have small genomes compared to other eukaryotic organism which provides a unique tool to study genome-wide phenomena. I will present recent results from our project where we use the basidiomycete genus Trichaptum as a model to understand speciation mechanisms in fungi. We use an integrative approach, by supporting genomic data with physiological experiments.