Ant crop fungus gene expression and transposable elements

• Grant number: 24/20805-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Molecular Genetics and Genetics of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Pepijn Wilhelmus Kooij
• Grantee: Stéfany Renata Rodrigues
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/22329-0 - The role of asexuality in mutualism stability, AP.JP

Abstract

The third objective of the Project "The role of asexuality in mutualism stability" is to investigate the role fungus-growing ants have in the epigenetics of their fungal crop. The cultivars of attine ants have shown to grow mushrooms when colonies collapse (Fisher et al., 1994; Mueller, 2002), suggesting that ants suppress basidiome formation. Therefore, if the ants actively suppress fungal sexuality, then they will show to manipulate the gene expression of their crop through changing epigenetic factors as well as the genomic architecture to maintain asexuality. This project will look at how the ants influence fungal gene expression through transcriptomics of fungal crops with and without ants. Furthermore, the presence and location of transposable elements (TEs) within the genomes will be analyzed. The genome and transcriptome will be obtained using the long-read technique of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. Due to the nature of this sequencing technique data can be extracted on methylation patterns (Simpson et al., 2017). This project will contribute to the understanding of the coevolution of this enigmatic mutualism and its effect on genome architecture, as well as to the evolution of mutualisms in general.