Fungal peroxidases in soils: functional and taxonomic diversity and enzymatic activities under varying land use regimes in the German biodiversity exploratories

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Martin Hofrichter; Dr. Dirk Krüger
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: from 2008 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 61027702

Saprobic soil fungi are responsible for the decomposition of recalcitrant biopolymers contained in photosynthetically produced plant litter. Without saprobic basidiomycetous fungi performing the task, the landscape would drown in the fallen leaf litter. This ecological group of fungi is widely distinct from symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi and from parasitic and saprobic fungi directly decaying solid wood. Isolation of microbes on artificial media is incompletely covering the microbial diversity in nature, and neither will any of the modern molecular detection methods cover all diversity because of the patchy and hidden occurrence of fungi. The German biodiversity exploratories offer different land use forms and land use intensities with varying plant communities to contrast and compare the diversity of fungal functional groups by combining different methods. In this study, we will particularly address one ecological group of fungi with genes required for the recycling of the carbon trapped in litter, extracellular peroxidases. This enzyme group will be detected on the genomic (DNA), transcriptomic (RNA) and proteomic (protein) level including the description of the catalytic parameters.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories