By Jordan Strickler
Researchers at the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CAFE) have discovered that a fungus living inside a common Kentucky woodland grass produces a rare combination of chemicals that likely helps protect the plant from hungry insects.
Published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the study looked at bearded shorthusk, a wild grass that grows in forests across the Commonwealth. Inside this grass is the fungus Epichloë brachyelytri, an “endophyte” that lives inside a plant without harming it. In fact, the fungus and the grass are symbiotic — the grass gives the fungus a home, and in return the fungus makes chemicals that keep bugs from eating the plant.
The research team, led by Christopher Schardl, Ph.D., and Padmaja Nagabhyru, Ph.D., in the Department of Plant Pathology, found that this fungus makes three different alkaloids. Two of them — exo-1-acetamidopyrrolizidine and chanoclavine — are usually just middle steps that other fungi turn into more complex chemicals. But this fungus stops the process early and keeps them as the final product.
“What makes it special is that it is the first fungus ever shown to do this with both chemicals at the same time,” Schardl said.
Source : uky.edu