MycoRant

Sliced black truffle. With egg. (e_calamar/flickr)

What information about those delicate fungal flavors and aromas will now yield itself to the prying machines of molecular biologists? French and Italian researchers announced in the journal Nature, that the genome of the Perigord black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) has been sequenced. Of course if you followed fungal news on twitter, you’d already know this, but better late than never!

Truffle Genome Reveals Genes for Sex

Read all about it in the New York Times article Unearthing the Secret Sex Lives of Truffles (while you still can, before they switch to a rumored pay-for-content model, perhaps soon after the iPad is released):

It turns out the truffles, too, have sex lives, said Dr. Francis Martin, a plant biologist at the University of Nancy in France and leader of the research team. The precious fungi had long been thought to lead an asexual existence, but Dr. Martin and his colleagues have found that they have two sexes, or mating types.

The information is of great significance to truffle growers, whom Dr. Martin now advises to inject roots with both sexes of truffle spore. The truffle then benefits from the purpose of sex, which is of course to generate new combinations of genes and fresh diversity.

The discovery of two mating types is a pretty strong bit of evidence that the organism undergoes sexual reproduction. This is a pretty big deal, considering most people thought the fungus reproduced asexually.

The original publication appeared online at the Nature website and lo and behold the full text of the Letter Périgord black truffle genome uncovers evolutionary origins and mechanisms of symbiosis (by many many authors) is available online. See also Scientists scent a breakthrough in truffle trafficking.

Based on some snooping around the internet, I gather that the researchers on the truffle genome project have been working on it for at least two years.

Tags: genome sequencing, genomics, perigord black truffle, symbiosis genes, truffle genome sequenced, Tuber mating types, Tuber melanosporum