Mortierella elongata MPI-CAGE-AA-0104 growing in the lab. Images by Stéphane Hacquard.

Mortierella elongata (Mucoromycota phylum, Mortierellales order) is a cosmopolitan soil saprotroph, capable of living in both soil and as an endophyte of healthy plant roots. Phylogenomic analyses support placement of M. elongata in a monophyletic clade with other early‐diverging terrestrial fungi belonging to the Mortierellomycotina, Mucoromycotina and Glomeromycotina (Spatafora et al., 2016). Plant‐associated fungi belonging to the phylum Mucoromycota are also known to harbor endosymbiotic bacteria belonging to the Glomeribacter‐Mycoavidus clade (Uehling et al. 2017). The sequenced Mortierella elongata strain MPI-CAGE-AA-0104 has been isolated from surface sterilized roots of the perennial plant species Arabis alpina (a relative of Arabidopsis thaliana) grown in the Cologne Agricultural Soil (CAS).

The sequencing of this fungal isolate is part of a larger project aiming at sequencing the genomes of numerous phylogenetically diverse root-associated fungi from Arabidopsis, Populus, and other plant hosts for further comparative genome analysis. Unravelling the genomic signatures reflecting the adaptation of these microbes to the host cell environment represents a promising way to better understand how the endophytic lifestyle evolved in phylogenetically unrelated fungal species. In addition, comparative genome analysis with saprotrophic, mycorrhizal and pathogenic fungi will provide new insights into the strategies used by the fungus to colonize plant roots as well as its biocontrol potential. This fungal isolate was sequenced as part of the 1KFG: Deep Sequencing of Ecologically-relevant fungi, whose goal is to fill in gaps in the Fungal Tree of Life by sequencing at least two reference genomes from the more than 500 recognized families of Fungi. This project additionally aims to inform research on plant-microbe interactions, microbial emission and capture of greenhouse gasses, and environmental metagenomic sequencing.

Note that the strain ID is based on the closed NCBI hit. We need to validate the phylogeny using whole genome sequencing data and attribute a novel strain ID.