CSBR: Ownership Transfer of University of Alabama Chytrid Culture Collection to University of Michigan

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

This project will secure an endangered collection of about 450 living strains of fungi from a group known as chytrids. The collection was developed by Dr. Martha Powell and Dr. Peter Letcher at the University of Alabama (UA) over the last 42 years. It served as the biological material that supported over 100 scientific papers on chytrids and contains unique strains unknown from any other collection. Chytrids are a poorly studied group which require unique conditions for their isolation and maintenance, and a large portion of known diversity of the group is represented in this collection. Although these microscopic fungi reproduce with a swimming spore (zoospore) they occur in soils as well as in fresh and saline waters; they fill important ecological roles as parasites and also as decomposers of unique material such as pollen, hair, and insect exoskeletons. The UA chytrid collection will be combined with a previously secured collection from the University of Maine into a joint collection termed the Collection of Zoosporic Eufungi at the University of Michigan (CZEUM). The CZEUM collection is being developed in order to serve as a repository for chytrid diversity in support of research on chytrid fungi by the global scientific community. This project has four primary goals. The first goal is to complete a physical transfer of the UA chytrid collection to the cryopreservation facility at the University of Michigan Research Museums Complex where it will be stored in the vapor of liquid nitrogen at -193 degrees Celsius. The second goal is to test the viability of each of the cultures in the collection and refreeze viable material in the liquid nitrogen freezers. Previously most samples had been stored in an ultralow freezer, which can lead to deterioration of viability. A third goal is to cryopreserve the remaining five persent of the collection for which cryopreservation had never been attempted. The final goal of the project is to characterize the strains using ribosomal RNA genes in order to provide an estimate of the true phylogenetic diversity of the collection. This latter goal involves sequencing small subunit, large subunit, and the internal transcribed spacer region of the ribosomal RNA using Oxford Nanopore Technology for strains in which this data is lacking. Successfully completed, this project will secure this unique reference collection and will enhance infrastructure for research on chytrid fungi at the University of Michigan and other institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.