RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Lichen fungi do not depend on the alga for ATP production
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.03.17.435722
DO 10.1101/2021.03.17.435722
A1 Gulnara Tagirdzhanova
A1 John P. McCutcheon
A1 Toby Spribille
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/17/2021.03.17.435722.abstract
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.