Fungi Have Unexpected Role to Play in Fight Against Climate Change

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Planting more trees seems like a logical way of counteracting climate change, as forests facilitate carbon sequestration, the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), but as efforts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere intensify, organisms from another kingdom — fungi — are showing they have an indispensable role to play in this process.

“Almost all plant life coexists with fungi during a certain period, if not the entire life cycle of a plant, but the reasons for this coexistence and its effects have not yet been fully deciphered,” said Ko-Hsuan “Koko” Chen, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center. Her lab studies plant-fungal symbiosis, especially between fungi and early photosynthetic organisms such as mosses.

Funguses are commonly used as ingredients in food and in medicines. However, their dynamic relationship with plants is not so well known and is significantly tied to the prosperity of plant species and element cycles, which are defined as the biogeochemical pathways in which elements are transformed by natural processes.

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