Rebecca Atkinson, Kew Gardens and NHM announce £4.5m mycological research programme, Museums Association, 21 May 2024

Research using institutions’ fungi and lichen collections aims to halt biodiversity loss.

The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew (RBG Kew) and the Natural History Museum (NHM) have received a £4.5m government grant for an initiative to sequence the DNA of their respective collections of fungi and lichens – and understand their potential for medicine, agriculture and environmental restoration.

Kew’s Fungarium houses the largest and most comprehensive fungal collection globally, with more than 1.25 million specimens from around the world including 50,000 “type” specimens (original reference material that is used to make a definitive link between a fungus as a living organism and the name applied to it).

The NHM’s lichen collection is also one of the world’s largest, comprising 400,000 specimens including 10,000 type specimens.

Despite their scale, little is known about the biology of many of the specimens each institution holds. Sequencing the genomes of thousands of specimens, and deciphering their genetic code, will allow scientists to understand the landscape of fungal diversity and unlock its potential for medicine, agriculture, and environmental restoration.

Understanding more about their genetic make-up will also support other research projects, such as investigating the effects of nitrogen air pollution on tea plantations in Sri Lanka, using lichens as indicators.

“The natural world is in trouble and biodiversity is in decline,” said Tim Littlewood, the executive director of science at NHM. “To protect our planet, we must understand the different organisms we share it with.

“The opportunity to DNA-sequence the world’s largest lichen collection at our cutting-edge labs is an innovative way to monitor nature and understand biodiversity and ecosystem function. Genomics is one of our 10 research themes aiming to find solutions from and for nature for some of the biggest global challenges.”

There are about 160,000 known species of fungi, which account for less than 10% of the 2.5 million species that are estimated to exist, according to Ester Gaya, the senior mycologist at RBG Kew.

“Fungi are essential components of all ecosystems and underpin most life on Earth,” Gaya said. “This new funding will enable us to characterise our incredible fungal collection at a molecular level, which will transform the way we identify fungi and understand how they’re related, and provide a window into the past that will shed a light into how pathogens and other fungal lifestyles have evolved through time.”

The research funding, which comes from Defra, is part of a new biodiversity alliance between RBG Kew and the NHM as well as the Zoological Society of London

The alliance aims to bring together collective expertise in order to halt biodiversity loss and help “set our societies on a nature-positive trajectory” through science-led innovation to support delivery of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.