Home • Agrocybe pediades AH 40210 v1.0
Photo by José María Barrasa
Photo by José María Barrasa

Agrocybe pediades (Fr.) Fayod is a very common saprobic member of Agaricales decaying grass litter, frequently fruiting in prairies, pastures and meadows from spring to the end of autumn. This is a cosmopolitan and widely distributed species in mediterranean and temperate areas throughout the world.

 

The genome of this fungus belongs to the large-sacale multi-genome of JGI CSP15-1609 project that is focused to analyze the genome of thirty-two representative saprobic Agaricales of three ecophysiological groups (wood/buried wood, leaf litter and grass litter decomposers) for a repertoire of enzymes acting on plant biomass. Sixteen of these genomes will be sequenced for the first time (the rest were already sequenced in other genomic projects). The genome of A. pediades is one of the new proposed for sequencing and is based on a strain isolated from an open grass area of a deciduous forest of central Spain.

According to molecular analyses (Matheny et al., 2006), A. pediades belongs to the Agaricoid clade. Although the greater part of its lineages are primarily saprobic, some exclusively ectomycorrhizal families (such as Inocybaceae) and the symbiotic with ants member Leucoagaricus gongylophorus (accessible at JGI) were also originated inside this clade. A. pediades belongs to Strophariaceae s. str, a family that comprises a number of saprobic species degrading leaf litter and dead wood in forests and grass in meadow habitats that play an important role in nutrient cycling of soil.

Since the genome of the phylogenetic related white-rot wood species A. aegerita is already sequenced, the genome of A. pediades will be of interest because it will provide comparative information on the ligninolytic machinery among representative wood rotting and grass litter decaying members, improving our knowledge on the diversification of oxidative extracellular enzymes within Strophariaceae. In this way, an atypical extracellular manganese peroxidase (MnP) (Hildén et. al., 2014) was described and characterized in A. praecox, a leaf litter decomposing species frequently found in open herbaceous areas of forests, that could represent a novel group of atypical short MnP enzymes.

Genome Reference(s)

References

Kristiina Hildén, Miia R. Mäkelä, Kari T. Steffen, Martin Hofrichter, Annele Hatakka, David B. Archer, Taina K. Lundell, 2014. Biochemical and molecular characterization of an atypical manganese peroxidase of the litter-decomposing fungus Agrocybe praecox. Gungal Genetics and Biology, 72: 131-136.

Matheny, P.B., Curtis, J.M., Hofstetter, V., Aime, M.C., Moncalvo, J.M., Ge, Z.W., Yang, Z.L., Slot, J.C., Ammirati, J.F., Baroni, T.J., Bougher, N.L., Hughes, K.W., Lodge, D.J., Kerrigan, R.W., Seidl, M.T., Aanen, D.K., DeNitis, M., Daniele, G.M., Desjardin, D.E., Kropp, B.R., Norvell, L.L., Parker, A., Vellinga, E.C., Vilgalys, R., Hibbett, D.S., 2006. Major clades of Agaricales: a multilocus phylogenetic overview. Mycologia 98, 982-995.