357회 Phylogenetic studies of Basidiomycetes

357회

연사 :  정 학 성, 서울대학교 생명과학부

제목: Phylogenetic studies of Basidiomycetes

Abstract

 The Basidiomycetes consists of the most conspicuous and well-recognized fungal taxa including gilled mushrooms, polypores, chantarelles, corticioids, tooth fungi, coral fungi, puffballs, earthstars, stinkhorns, bird's nest fungi, or jelly fungi. This diverse group is characterized by the possession of basidia that produce 2 to 8 meiotic basidiospores on them and includes more than 22 thousand described species. Most of these species are saprotrophs that degrade cellulose, hemicellulose, or lignin as their nutrition sources and are found on forest litter, composts, grasslands, or wood where they cause decay. Some fungi cause major tree diseases on living or moribund hardwoods and conifers. Other fungi form mycorrhizal associations with the roots of plants and provide a great deal of benefits to host plants, playing a significant role in forest ecosystems. And some mushrooms have been used as food sources or traditional herb medicines and a great amount of mushroom products with biological activities are widely studied these days.

    Phylogenetic studies on Basidiomycetes have been increasing to a great amount. According to molecular data, traditional taxonomic systems or informations are frequently controversial in view of current phylogenetic studies mostly based on two major Polyporoid and Hymenochaetoid clades of Basidiomycetes presently divided into eight mutually exclusive clades. Many characters considered important to the classification of Basidiomycetes often seem to be too homoplasious, thus leading to artificial or false systematic conclusions. However, recent and current molecular works proved that some characters like mitic system, presence or absence of clamps, type of rot, spore surface ornamentation and amyloidity of spores were still very important characters with phylogenetic significance. Molecular data are now providing plenty of new and fresh insights and enable the students of mycology to find a lot of new interpretations for monophyly and polyphyly, character evolution, phylogenetic order relationships, phylogeographic distributions and origins, fungal speciation, root and sister group relationships, true relationships among controversial taxa, or detailed structures of major clades, thus becoming essential for resolving the true phylogeny of Basidiomycetes and understanding the in-depth biodiversity of higher fungi in modern mycology. For the present, much more taxa of systematic importance are definitely needed to be added and evaluated for a comprehensive and reliable phylogenetic conclusions for Basidiomycetes.