Vranic, B.
Presented at the ASM at Estes Park (2006-09-01 to 2012-09-23 )
Soil microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) are responsible for processes such as decomposition, recycling and mineralization of organic residues. Homobasidiomycetes are the group of fungal organisms that act as dominant recyclers of plant residue in soil. Soil saprobic Homobasidiomycetes have significant ligninolytic abilities because of their production of lignin-modifying enzymes. Diversity estimates for saprotrophic Basidiomycetes in the soil are based mostly on observations of their fruiting bodies above ground. Basidiomycetes in the soil are under-represented in soil microbial surveys due to the difficulties associated with isolating them in pure culture. Slow growing soil Homobasidiomycetes are not readily recovered using standard isolation techniques because of competition from rapidly growing Ascomycetes and Zygomycetes. However, incorporation of the fungicide Benomyl into the medium allows for selective isolation of saprotrophic Basidiomycetes from soil through culturing. Two different culturing approaches (directly from soil and from wooden baits) were used in attempt to selectively isolate saprotrophic basidiomycetes from soil.The goal of my research is to determine the communities of soil saprotrophic Basidiomycetes in selected treatments of KBS-LTER that can be cultured directly from soil or from wooden baits. The second goal of this research is to determine whether the different approaches of culturing from soil and wooden baits or DNA extraction from soil (done by Lynch and Bahnmann on same selected treatments of KBS-LTER soil) favour detection of certain Basidiomycetes.
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