Inducing Novel Endosymbioses by Bacteria Implantation into Fungi
For this study, M. rhizoxinica HKI-0454 was injected into R. microsporus CBS 631.82 to study endosymbiogenesis. To follow the early adaptation, a directed laboratory evolution experiment was conducted, where a strict selection for the endosymbiosis was applied by sorting for spores colonized by the bacterium via FACS. This selection pressure was applied for 10 rounds of sporulation of the host fungus, and the genetic changes were tracked in the bacterium and the fungus using Illumina sequencing. A reference genome for R. microsporus CBS 631.82 was assembled using long read sequences. Samples were named after the organisms with F for fungus, B for bacterium, and the round number and line number to which the sample corresponds. i.e. FR10L4 is the fungus from round 10 in line 4.