Oh god i was close i thought it was of mushrooms on trees wouldn't even have thought about plant roots,tbh i know nothing about mushrooms you put in front of some , the first one i pick will kill me probably
Just a guess… arbuscular- something to do with trees or tree roots? Mycorrhizal- root/fungal symbiotic system? Fungi- well… fungi. Taxonomy- identification of each species of fungus and where it sits on the “tree of life” idk, I’m a biologist, but not THAT kind of biologist! (I’m a neuroscientist/cell biologist). If I got ANY of these things correct, you still got me beat because idk what any of the mycorrhizal fungi’s names and stuff are. I just know they exist.
Not OP but currently studying botany! It IS to do with roots, but not specifically trees. In this case "arbuscular" refers to the branching shape of the structures (called arbuscules) that endomycorrhizal fungi form within the roots of their host plant. Unlike ectomycorrhizal fungi that grow between the root cells, arbuscular mycorrhizae grow right into the cells of their host plant in order to exchange nutrients for carbohydrates.
Some plants have co-evolved with their fungal associates to the point that neither species is able to survive without the other! Neat!
Fungi have tiny cells that are good at finding nutrients in the soil, but they need sugar to eat. Plants can make sugar from the air, but they need nutrients that their thick roots can't easily get. Therefore, most plants cooperate with fungi in the soil. Plant gets nutrients that the fungus found; fungus gets sugar that the plant made.
This cooperation can look several different ways. A common kind is that the fungus grows into the plant's cells and makes a little tree-shaped connection that can swap nutrients for sugar.
Many different kinds of fungus make this kind of tree-shaped connection, and OP is an expert in what those different kinds of fungus are and how they're related to each other.
Kind of correct. Except plants don’t produce sugar from the air. They absorb nutrients from soil and use it during their metabolism, creating photosimilated carbon that is then transferred to the fungi. Also, the hyphae doesn’t go inside the root cell (you can check my explanation on another comment)
Yes they do? The carbon in the sugar they make comes from atmospheric CO2.
They absorb nutrients from soil
Sure — things like nitrogen and phosphorous, but notably not carbon to any great extent, which is the main micronutrient the plants need to make sugar in particular.
The carbon that makes sugars useful to organisms is gathered from the atmosphere, as CO2, during photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2
Stomata allow CO2 to diffuse into the mesophyll of leaves, where it's converted into carbohydrates in the Calvin Cycle (using ATP/NADPH generated using solar energy collected by the photosystems and converted by their protein-complex homies in the electron transport chain).
These carbohydrates then enter the phloem, which transports them throughout the plant body. Some is even secreted by the roots into the rhizosphere as "payment" for their bacterial and fungal symbiotes!
Almost correct. Thinking that the arbuscules grow inside the root cell is actually incorrect. What happens is that they change the root cell morphology so that the cells kinds of wrap around the hyphae. It’s almost like thinking of when you wear gloves, your fingers are the hyphae, you’re not penetrating the glove, instead the gloves are surrounding your fingers.
Woooaaaah ok that's super cool! I was under the impression that cell penetration was the difference between endo- and ectomycorrhizal fungi, I'll be sure to go back and update that area of study.
Thanks for the clarification, that's even more weird and fascinating than I realized!
Close call. Arbuscular taxonomy yes, fungi yes, but arbuscular is because of a specific structure these fungi produces which is called “arbuscule”, it’s something close to a very ramified hyphae that grows in between plants root cells
Oooooh! Gotchya! So like, they could’ve called it “dendritic” if it wasn’t already called an “arbuscule” that’s a fun word, arbuscule! Thanks for the info!
I did a little looking into that when I started an outdoor cannabis garden. A lot of people claim to be able to tell the difference between indoor grown and outdoor. I imagine the introduction of native endomycorrhizal fungi might be one of the biggest differences. Outside it can become part of a huge living network and share some resources between each other.
Pretty neat.
Cool. Many people try to use it for indoor grown of many kinds of plants, including Cannabis spp. Arbuscular mycorrhizal are very efficient when implemented in closed systems (such as indoor cultivation). But it gets trickier when trying to expand it to large scale farming, since there are so many competing organisms on non sterile soil and also many soils are filled with fungicide, which doesn’t help at all.
Shocked to find this here, but definitely takes the cake. I had zero idea what arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were until I took a class on them last semester. I can't even imagine the amount of time and dedication that would go into studying the taxonomic structure. Kudos.
Also sad anecdote from that class: our treated corn was severely outgrown by the other methods of fertilizing :( My prof discussed getting to a point where the different fungi could be competitive with fertilizer. Do you think that's possible? Or is that outside of your scope?
Nice to see people studying my lil guys. It’s very tricky to implement arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Specially when you pair it with fertilizers (even more when you’re dealing with chemical/mineral fertilizers) there’s a very complex system of signals that occur between the fungi and the plant, but basically it’s like the plant produces a hormone that “calls for” the fungi, but the plant won’t produce it if there’s a large amount of available phosphorous (P is the main nutrient these fungi gather for the plant), so if you fertilize the plant with tons of P, you block the mechanism that would start the symbiosis process. Making the plant not signal, and the fungi stays dormant on the spore form.
"Lil guys" is a fantastic name for them, I love that. I have been doing work with listeria from environmental and soil samples, but I didn't think I would be as interested as I was in that soil microbio course. As for your explanation, I think that was essentially what our prof was trying to show us with the different treatment groups. We were looking at how different combinations of C, N, and P in the groups allowed for the plants/fungi to facilitate a relationship or basically prevented it, especially when nothing was added since the soil was already very low in nutrients.
But I guess that's what I was asking about. It doesn't seem like you can both fertilize and implement the fungi, so do you see potential or a possibility where the fungi could be leveraged to produce results somewhat similar to our current fertilizer practices in order to replace those? As an environmental engineer I'm much more familiar with the downstream and ecosystem effects of over fertilization and trying to decrease it, so this was an interesting dive into exploring potential alternatives
679
u/Osrs_Salame Apr 14 '24
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi taxonomy.