| Fungal populations in soil are controlled in part by their interactions with bacteria. There tend to be high-bacterial, low-fungal-content soils, such as agricultural land and dune soils, and high-fungal soils lower in bacterial content, such as humic forest soils. Several soil types are known to contain numerous bacteria specialized to attack fungi through, among other adaptations, elaboration of the enzyme chitinase. The aims of this group are to study how fungal populations vary among soils low and high in antagonistic bacteria, and how the expression of bacterial pathogenic factors as well as fungal defense factors are genetically controlled. |
