Abstract
Recent advances in molecular biological methods have drastically changed our understanding of the diversity, phylogeny, ecology, and evolution of fungi. The purpose of this chapter is to address recent progress in our knowledge about the biodiversity of fungi, with emphasis on the potential impact of pyrosequencing to estimate fungal diversity in environmental samples. Progress in DNA sequence-based techniques notably enables us not only to overcome potential flaws of traditional mycological techniques but also to evaluate fungal richness more efficiently and reliably. Especially, the development of next-generation sequencing technologies has revolutionized large-scale sequencing of environmental fungal DNA. A number of papers have been published regarding metagenomic analysis of fungal diversity in environmental samples, using Roche 454 pyrosequencing since 2009. The number of publications on fungal metagenomics will be accelerated, but there are potential methodological difficulties that have not been solved yet. DNA barcoding with universal genetic markers and high-quality sequence databases becomes more important as reliable taxonomic affiliations of numerous MOTUs are necessitated. Further studies are needed to test the applicability of pyrosequencing to such hot spots of fungal diversity as tropical forests and to explore functional aspects of fungal populations.
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