Background:
All plants possess microbial communities associated with their tissues without causing apparent harm. These communities contain an immense and poorly explored biodiversity that vary depending on the species of plant, plant organ, and developmental stage, as well as diverse environmental conditions. The microbial communities associated with non-flowering plants are particularly poorly explored, even though several lineages of deeply diverging fungi have been described in association only to the tissues of such plants.
Equisetum is the only genus in the subclass Equisetidae, a group of non-flowering plants that dominated terrestrial landscapes during the Carboniferous and Permian periods. Equisetum is abundant in humid climates and in semi-aquatic environments at all latitudes and is represented by several species in Norway. The genus contains cell walls with uncommon polysaccharide compositions and deposition of silica. Because of the phylogenetic distance to other plants and the unusual properties of their tissues, we hypothesize that fungal communities associated with Equisetum tissues might hold novel fungal diversity and unusual silica metabolisms.
The project:
In this project, you will study the composition of fungal communities associated with Equisetum. The project will involve field collection of Equisetum samples in Norway, molecular barcoding of fungal endophytes and isolation of fungal strains from plant tissues, and bioinformatic analyses of the resulting sequences. Additionally, we will apply molecular barcoding techniques to endophytic communities associated with herbarium specimens of Equisetum collected in Norway. This, in order to assess the viability of herbarium material to the study of endophytic communities in this genus. You will be member of the ISOP research group under the supervision of postdoc Miguel Naranjo-Ortiz and Prof. Mika Bendiksby. ISOP values a positive, dynamic and collaborative working environment.