The Paleozoic Origin of Enzymatic Lignin Decomposition Reconstructed from 31 Fungal Genomes

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1221748
• Publication Date: 2012-06-28T18:30:31Z
• Authors: Dimitrios Floudas; Manfred Binder; Robert Riley; Kerrie Barry; Robert A. Blanchette; Bernard Henrissat; Angel T. Martínez; Robert Otillar; Joseph W. Spatafora; Jagjit S. Yadav; Andrea Aerts; Isabelle Benoit; Alex Boyd; Alexis Carlson; Alex Copeland; Pedro M. Coutinho; Ronald P. de Vries; Patricia Ferreira; Keisha Findley; Brian Foster; Jill Gaskell; Dylan Glotzer; Paweł Górecki; Joseph Heitman; Cedar Hesse; Chiaki Hori; Kiyohiko Igarashi; Joel A. Jurgens; Nathan Kallen; Phil Kersten; Annegret Kohler; Ursula Kües; T. K. Arun Kumar; Alan Kuo; Kurt LaButti; Luis F. Larrondo; Erika Lindquist; Albee Ling; Vincent Lombard; Susan Lucas; Taina Lundell; Rachael Martin; David J. McLaughlin; Ingo Morgenstern; Emanuelle Morin; Claude Murat; Laszlo G. Nagy; Matt Nolan; Robin A. Ohm; Aleksandrina Paty...; Antonis Rokas; Francisco J. Ruiz...; Grzegorz Sabat; Asaf Salamov; Masahiro Samejima; Jeremy Schmutz; Jason C. Slot; Franz St. John; Jan Stenlid; Hui Sun; Sheng Sun; Khajamohiddin Syed; Adrian Tsang; Ad Wiebenga; Darcy Young; Antonio Pisabarro; Daniel C. Eastwood; Francis Martin; Dan Cullen; Igor V. Grigoriev; David S. Hibbett
• Keywords: 580; 570; Hongo de pudrición blanca; 0303 health sciences; Indoles; 06 Agua limpia y saneamiento; Biología; [SDV]Life Sciences [q-bio]; Basidiomycota; Bayes Theorem; 06 Clean water and sanitation; 15. Life on land; Lignin; Wood; [SDV] Life Sciences [q-bio]; Evolution, Molecular; Madera - Deterioro; 03 medical and health sciences; Peroxidases; Lignina; Genome, Fungal

Dating Wood Rot

Specific lineages within the basidiomycete fungi, white rot species, have evolved the ability to break up a major structural component of woody plants, lignin, relative to their non–lignin-decaying brown rot relatives. Through the deep phylogenetic sampling of fungal genomes,

Floudas et al.

(p. 1715 ; see the Perspective by

Hittinger

) mapped the detailed evolution of wood-degrading enzymes. A key peroxidase and other enzymes involved in lignin decay were present in the common ancestor of the Agaricomycetes. These genes then expanded through gene duplications in parallel, giving rise to white rot lineages.