Rosling lab: Our research

We combine eDNA metabarcoding with fungal culturing efforts to understand and describe the unknown majority of fungi that live in our soils. This approach has allowed us to describe the ubiquitous ancient fungal class Archaeorhizomycetes, a.k.a. Soil Clone Group 1, (Science 333, 876-879).

This fungal class is diverse and occur in roots and soil from most terrestrial ecosystems but their ecological roles and means of dispersal remains unknown. In our research we continue to explore function, distribution and diversity of the class. Efforts to capture more species in culture are mostly fruitless and we argue that eDNA sequencing data can actually provide strong evidence for delaminating species in the class (Kalsoom Khan et al 2020). One PhD thesis has been completed within the research program, Dr. Kerri Kluting in 2022. Dr Veera Tuovinen joined the group as a post doc in 2019 and continues the work to describe unknown species of Archaeorhizomycetes.

Soils develop as a result of their biological processes while constrained by the environmental and geochemical conditions of a site. Soils in turn provide the environmental constrains that soil fungi adapt to, in order to, form associations with host, compete for substrate and to complete their life cycle. Fungi are well adapted to the temporally and spatially heterogeneous soil environment. Thin hyphae allow for efficient substrate exploration and provide large surface area for uptake. Resource translocation within the mycelia allows fungi to link spatially separated substrates, i.e. the carbon supply in its host roots with sources for nutrient uptake in soil. Through collaborations with chemists and geochemists the group contributes to research on soil organic matter decomposition and enhanced silica weathering as a possible mean for carbon sequestration.