Progress and disparities in fungal genomics in the long-read era.

Fungal genomics has expanded over three decades, but phylogenetic representation remains uneven, with major taxonomic gaps persisting—especially outside Dikarya and among unculturable taxa.

• Why it matters: The field has shifted from data scarcity to constraints driven by taxonomic bias, inconsistent annotation, sparse metadata, and interpreting complex genome structure.
• What they did: The authors review progress from the Fungal Genome Initiative through third-generation long-read sequencing and compile public assemblies to measure trends in contiguity, completeness, long-read adoption, and taxonomic coverage.
• The result: They find that only a minority of assemblies are annotated and propose priorities: coordinated gap-closing, better repository metrics for high-quality assemblies, and standardized genome annotation.

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