From genes to epigenomes: rethinking arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi adaptation.
Epigenomic regulation enables rapid adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, independent of genetic changes, facilitating their ecological success.
- Why it matters: Understanding how AMF adapt and vary phenotypically is crucial for grasping their ecological roles and mutualistic interactions with plants, which are currently poorly understood due to unpredictable outcomes.
- What they did: The authors review recent evidence of epigenomic mechanisms controlling gene expression in AMF and propose multigenerational experiments to identify how these processes drive trait variation.
- The result: This work highlights epigenomic regulation as a key factor in AMF adaptation, opening new avenues for studying fungal ecology and improving plant-fungal mutualisms through targeted epigenetic insights.