This study assessed the diversity and distribution of fungal communities in eight marine sediments of Kongsfjorden (Svalbard, High Arctic) using 454 pyrosequencing with fungal-specific primers targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the ribosomal rRNA gene. Sedimentary fungal communities showed high diversity with 42,219 reads belonging to 113 operational taxonomic units (OTUs...

Arbuscular mycorrhizae are ancient symbioses that are thought to have originated >400 million years ago in the roots of plants, pioneering the colonization of terrestrial habitats. In these associations, a key process is the transfer of phosphorus as inorganic phosphate to the host plant across the fungus-plant interface. Mycorrhiza-specific phosphate transporter genes and their regulation are ...

The morphology of a Glomus-like fungus-host interaction in chlorophyllous gametophytes and young apogamic sporophytes of Dryopteris muenchii A.R. Sm. was studied from ferns cultivated in laboratory, using soil as substrate. An aseptate fungus colonized the gametophytes' tissue through the rhizoids, developing vesicles. The fungus penetrated the young sporophytes primary roots by developing appr...

Dear Editor, In their recent article published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Anna Ogar et al. (2015) have shown, thanks to a careful experimental design, that the addition of diazotrophic bacteria together with mycorrhizal fungi significantly improves plant growth and performance. Strikingly, the addition of inoculum containing only diazotrophs but not mycorrhizal fungi had c...