Fungi tend to be in a bit of a tangle. There are many millions of undescribed fungi, and many public DNA sequence databases contain fungal sequences that aren't assigned to any known fungal group. Now, researchers have taken steps to sort out this tangle of DNA.
About 100,000 species of fungi have been formally described. However, there could be as many as 6 million extant fungal species. Unfortunately, it seems as if the interaction between fungal taxonomy and DNA sequencing, unraveled with molecular techniques, is not optimal.
"There is no taxonomic feedback loop in place to highlight the presence of these enigmatic lineages to the mycological community, and they often end up in sequence databases for years without attracting significant research interest," write the authors in the latest study, published in MycoKeys. "More than 10 years in some cases, as a matter of fact."
In this latest study, the researchers created a search function that produces lists of genus-level clusters of fungal DNA sequences. These sequences possess a taxonomic affiliation that, currently, scientists know next to nothing about. The lists are re-computed on a monthly basis and account for any updates and additions contributed by the scientific community.
The researchers hope that this new search ability could shed light on these fungal lineages. This, in turn, could help speed up the studies that involve formal description of underlying species. It's definitely a good start considering the fact that very little is known about these species.
"Indeed, nothing can be said of the way they make a living," write the researchers. "It is simply not known. We make no claim as to the importance of these fungi from whatever point of view-ecological, economic or otherwise. We do make claim to their uniqueness, because it is frustrating in the year 2016, not to be able to assign a name to a fungal sequence even at the phylum level. We hope that the present publication will serve to put the spotlight on these uncharted parts of the fungal tree of life, and we invite the reader to examine them through our online tools or otherwise."
The findings could help researchers better understand fungi. More specifically, it allows researchers to look up species and keep a comprehensive database.
The findings are published in the March 2016 journal MycoKeys.
