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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Fungal Biol.
Sec. Fungal Physiology and Metabolism
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/ffunb.2024.1446674
This article is part of the Research Topic Highlights of the 1st Fun-Ex Conference: Evolution, Biodiversity, Taxonomy and Genomics of Extremophilic and Extremotolerant Fungi View all 6 articles

Metal tolerance of Río Tinto fungal diversity

Provisionally accepted
Monike Oggerin Monike Oggerin 1Catalina del Moral Catalina del Moral 2Nuria Rodríguez Nuria Rodríguez 3Nuría Fernández Nuría Fernández 4José M. Martínez Lozano José M. Martínez Lozano 2Iván Lorca Iván Lorca 5Ricardo Amils Ricardo Amils 2*
  • 1 Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Max Planck Society, Bremen, Bremen, Germany
  • 2 Molecular Biology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
  • 3 Centro de Astrobiología, INTA-CSIC, Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain
  • 4 Centro de Biotecnología, Madrid, Asturias, Spain
  • 5 Centre for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Madrid, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    South-West Spain’s Río Tinto is a stressful acidic microbial habitat with a noticeably high concentration of toxic heavy metals. Nevertheless has an unexpected degree of eukaryotic diversity in its basin, with a high diversity of fungal saprotrophs. Although some studies on the eukaryotic diversity in Rio Tinto have been published, none of them has used molecular methodologies to describe the fungal diversity and taxonomic affiliations that emerge along the river at different seasons. The aim of the present study was to isolate and describe the seasonal diversity of the fungal community in the Río Tinto basin and its correlation with the physico-chemical parameters existing along the river’s course. The taxonomic affiliation of 359 fungal isolates, based on the complete internal transcribed spacer DNA sequences, revealed a high degree of diversity, identifying species belonging primarily to the phylum Ascomycota, but representatives of the Basidiomycota and Mucoromycota were also present. Forty representative isolates along the river were evaluated for their tolerance to toxic heavy metals. Some of the isolates were able to grow in the presence of 1000 mM of Cu2+, 750 mM of As5+and Cd2+, and 100 mM of Co2+, Ni2+ and Pb2+.

    Keywords: acidic fungi, Río Tinto, heavy metals, Eurotiomycetes, Dothideomycetes, Sordariomycetes, Penicillium, Acidiella

    Received: 10 Jun 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Oggerin, del Moral, Rodríguez, Fernández, Martínez Lozano, Lorca and Amils. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ricardo Amils, Molecular Biology, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, 28049, Spain

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