Abstract
Lichen associations, a classic model for successful and sustainable interactions between micro-organisms, have been studied for many years. However, there are significant gaps in our understanding about how the lichen symbiosis operates at the molecular level. This review addresses opportunities for expanding current knowledge on signalling and metabolic interplays in the lichen symbiosis using the tools and approaches of systems biology, particularly network modelling. The largely unexplored nature of symbiont recognition and metabolic interdependency in lichens could benefit from applying a holistic approach to understand underlying molecular mechanisms and processes. Together with ‘omics’ approaches, the application of signalling and metabolic network modelling could provide predictive means to gain insights into lichen signalling and metabolic pathways. First, we review the major signalling and recognition modalities in the lichen symbioses studied to date, and then describe how modelling signalling networks could enhance our understanding of symbiont recognition, particularly leveraging omics techniques. Next, we highlight the current state of knowledge on lichen metabolism. We also discuss metabolic network modelling as a tool to simulate flux distribution in lichen metabolic pathways and to analyse the co-dependence between symbionts. This is especially important given the growing number of lichen genomes now available and improved computational tools for reconstructing such models. We highlight the benefits and possible bottlenecks for implementing different types of network models as applied to the study of lichens.
Highlights
Lichens are often seen as a typical example of successful and sustainable symbiotic interactions between micro-organisms (Ahmadjian, 1993; Honegger, 1998)
We summarise the current knowledgebase of signalling and recognition mechanisms in the lichen symbiosis
We review the literature on lichen metabolism and propose that modelling fluxes in metabolic networks could be a powerful tool for providing insights into lichen metabolism in particular, and the metabolic interplays between symbiotic partners in general
Summary
Lichens are often seen as a typical example of successful and sustainable symbiotic interactions between micro-organisms (Ahmadjian, 1993; Honegger, 1998). Previous studies have shown that lichens harbour a diverse microbiome (e.g., Petrini et al, 1990; Hofstetter et al, 2007; Grube et al, 2009; Hodkinson and Lutzoni, 2009), and more recent studies corroborate lichens as multi-symbioses, i.e., complex multi-species associations including bacteria and other fungi or algae (Spribille et al, 2016; Onut-Brannstrom et al, 2018; Tuovinen et al, 2019; Smith et al, 2020; Leiva et al, 2021) In such symbioses, each partner contributes to the association: the primary mycobiont provides shelter and minerals to the photobiont, while the photobiont provides organic carbon fixed from atmospheric CO2 via photosynthesis (Nash, 2008a) as well as nitrogen if it is a cyanobacteria. Lectins have been isolated and characterised from both chlorolichens and
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