PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Gulnara Tagirdzhanova
AU  - John P. McCutcheon
AU  - Toby Spribille
TI  - Lichen fungi do not depend on the alga for ATP production
AID  - 10.1101/2021.03.17.435722
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.03.17.435722
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/17/2021.03.17.435722.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/17/2021.03.17.435722.full
AB  - Lichen fungi live in a symbiotic association with unicellular phototrophs and have no known aposymbiotic stage. A recent study postulated that some of them have lost mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation and rely on their algal partners for ATP. This claim originated from an apparent lack of ATP9, a gene encoding one subunit of ATP synthase, from a few mitochondrial genomes. Here we show that while these fungi indeed have lost the mitochondrial ATP9, each retain a nuclear copy of this gene. Our analysis reaffirms that lichen fungi produce their own ATP.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.