After an initial lag phase dedicated to the sequencing of easily cultured saprotrophic fungi (among the first three published genomes were the models Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Neurospora crassa) and species of biomedical, agricultural or biotechnological interest, genomics is now poised to rapidly permeate the fields of fungal ecology and evolution. As regards mycorrhizal associations, the story begins in 2008 with the publication of the genome of the agaric Laccaria bicolor (Martin et al., 2008), followed 2 yr later by publication of the Black Truffle of Perigord Tuber melanosporum genome (Martin et al., 2010). Within the last 2 yr, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI; http://jgi.doe.gov/) of the US Department of Energy has made available to the scientific community the genomes of at least a dozen additional mycorrhizal species and many more are expected to be released in the near future. Mycorrhizal fungal genome projects are part of an initiative for systematic sequencing of species representative of ecological important functional groups, including plant pathogens and wood rotters and will cover all major fungal phyla.
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