Wei Liu

Chinese Academy of Sciences | CAS · Kunming Institute of Botany

True morels (Morchella, Pezizales) are a popular edible and medicinal fungus with great nutritional and economic value. The dynamics and regulatory mechanisms during the morphogenesis and maturation of morels are poorly understood. In this study, the metabolomes and transcriptomes of the mycelium (MY), primordium differentiation (PR), young fruitin...

Morels are one of the most highly prized edible and medicinal mushrooms worldwide. Therefore, historically, there has been a large international interest in their cultivation. Numerous ecological, physiological, genetic, taxonomic, and mycochemical studies have been previously developed. At the beginning of this century, China finally achieved arti...

Morels, which belong to the Ascomycete genus Morchella, are highly valued edible fungi treasured by gourmet chefs worldwide. Some species are saprotrophic and others are able to form facultative mycorrhizal-like associations with plant roots without establishing true ectomycorrhizal symbioses. In general, it is considered that the formation of asex...

羊肚菌早期的驯化栽培因受制于基础研究不足而稳定性差。近年来，得益于羊肚菌人工栽培的快速发展，我国在羊肚菌种质鉴定与选育、交配型基因与生活史、菌种老化与质控体系、营养代谢与组学等研究领域取得了系列进展，并在一定程度上支撑了羊肚菌栽培区域和面积的快速扩张。然而，目前羊肚菌栽培仍然存在着优良种质匮乏、整体产量不稳定、病害与连作障碍凸显等问题，相关基础研究亟待开展与加强。

Introduction Morchella importuna (M. importuna) is a rare fungus with high nutrition value and distinct flavor. Despite the successful artificial cultivation, its genetic characteristics and biological processes such as life cycle, reproductive system, and trophic mode remain poorly understood. Methods Considering this, we constructed pEH2B and pM...

True morels (Morchella, Pezizales) are world-renowned edible mushrooms (ascocarps) that are widely demanded in international markets. Morchella has been successfully artificially cultivated since 2012 in China and is rapidly becoming a new edible mushroom industry occupying up to 16,466 hectares in the 2021–2022 season. However, nearly 25% of the t...

Morel mushrooms are iconic ascomycetes that are economically valuable and have attracted the attention of a large number of scientific researchers around the world. However, the tendency of morel fungi to undergo heterokaryosis through plasmogamy is not well understood. In this study, three populations of stipe tissue isolates were isolated from as...

Applying regular morphology combined with the technology of ITS sequence analysis the identification and phylogenetic analysis of the 4 cultivated strains and 5 wild morel isolates mainly collected from Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality were carried out． The study followed the sequence identification program required by data bank of multi...

Strain aging has been mainly contributing to the "uncertainty" of Morchella farming. The situation calls for urgent quantitative assessment of strain aging in cultivated Morchella mushrooms. In this paper, systemic senescence of the productive strains of M. eximia, M. importuna, and M. sextelata was achieved through successive subculturing to provi...

Morchella spp. are well-known and economically valuable edible mushrooms. The molecular mechanism of development in Morchella fungi is poorly understood, although it can be artificially cultivated. In this paper, the intracellular proteomes of three vegetative growth stages (mycelial, sclerotial initiation and maturation) and two sexual reproductiv...

Our previous study found that isolates from morel stipes showed a large proportion of mating type deletion, which implied the nuclear evolution and spatial heterogeneity. In this paper, the specific mating type genes of Mat1-1-1 and Mat1-2-1 in Morchella importuna were analyzed using the relative quantitative method of qRT-PCR to study the uneven n...

Morels (Morchella sp.) are economically important edible macro-fungi, which can grow on various synthetic or semi-synthetic media. However, the complex nutritional metabolism and requirements of these fungi remain ill-defined. This study, based on the plant biomass commonly used in the artificial cultivation of morels, assessed and compared the gro...

Transformation of Fonsecaea pedrosoi into muriform cells enhances the resistance against phagocytosis and elimination by host immune cells, and links to the chronicity of chromoblastomycosis. Here, we aim to determine whether the muriform cells can reproduce in tissue without reverse transformation into hyphal form by using an experimental nu/nu-BA...

The commercial production of Morchella mushrooms calls for urgent breeding of excellent varieties or strains with appropriate tools, such as protoplast fusion. However, the protoplast fusion in morels has not been studied. In this paper, interspecific hybridization between cultivated morels of M. importuna and M. sextelata by PEG-induced protoplast...

Morchella crassipes (Vent.) Pers., a typical yellow morel species with high economic value, is mainly distributed in the low altitude plains of Eurasia. However, rare research has been performed on its genomics and polarity, thus limiting its research and development. Here, we reported a fine physical map of the nuclear genome at the subchromosomal...

The complete mitochondrial genome of Morchella importuna, the famous edible and medicinal mushroom, was assembled as a 272,238 bp single circular dsDNA. As the largest mitogenome among fungi, it exhibits several distinct characteristics. The mitogenome of M. importuna encoded 14 core conserved mitochondrial protein-coding genes and 151 mitochondria...

True morels (Morchella spp.) are edible, medicinal mushrooms which have recently been artificially cultivated in China but stable production remains a problem. Here, we describe complete and comprehensive transcriptome of Morchella importuna at the stages of vegetative mycelium (VM), initial sclerotium (IS) and mature sclerotium (MS) by deep transc...

The prominent problem of "uncertainty" has been frustrating morel farming since the commercial production of Morchella mushrooms was realized in 2012 in China. Spawn aging may be the main underlying reason. In this paper, aging in cultivated strains of M. importuna T4 and M. sextelata T6 was achieved by successive subculturing. Oxidative stress, my...

The reliability of qRT-PCR results depend on the stability of reference genes used for normalization, suggesting the necessity of identification of reference genes before gene expression analysis. Morels are edible mushrooms well-known across the world and highly prized by many culinary kitchens. Here, several candidate genes were selected and desi...

Morchella is a popular edible fungus worldwide due to its rich nutrition and unique flavor. Many research efforts were made on the domestication and cultivation of Morchella all over the world. In recent years, the cultivation of Morchella was successfully commercialized in China. However, the biology is not well understood, which restricts the fur...

In March 2013, pileus rot disease was first observed on cultivated Morchella importuna. Infected ascomata were covered by white, velvety mycelia mainly on the pileus, and the infection resulted in malformed fruiting bodies. The causal pathogen was identified as Diploöspora longispora based on its morphology and the internal transcribed spacer of it...

The commercial production of Morchella mushrooms, especially M. importuna, has been realized since 2012 in China, which facilitates the fundamental studies of Morchella spp. In this paper, the cytological characteristics at three stages of ascocarpic development and the nuclear behavior during meiosis and ascosporogenesis in cultivated strain M. im...

Lentinula edodes has the potential to degrade woody and nonwoody lignocellulosic biomass. However, the mechanism of lignocellulose degradation by L. edodes is unclear. The aim of this work is to explore the profiling of soluble secreted proteins involved in lignocellulose degradation in L. edodes. For that, we compared the secretomes of L. edodes g...

用4μg/mL 4′,6-二脒基-2-苯基吲哚（DAPI）对细胞核染色,采用激光共聚焦显微成像技术观察粗腿羊肚菌（Morchella crassipes）子囊孢子的萌发过程。新鲜的粗腿羊肚菌子囊孢子呈椭圆状,大小13.015.3μm×21.524.0μm,成熟子囊孢子的细胞核数量为1832个;CYM液体培养基,23℃培养6h后子囊孢子体积逐渐膨大至初始体积的1.72.9倍,泡囊化现象明显;612h开始形成芽管,泡囊逐渐消失,出芽点在椭圆形细胞的一端形成或两端先后形成,数量不等的细胞核由子囊孢子内迁至芽管中,形成多核丝状;芽管生长至2030μm后,在出芽点与孢子连接处形成隔膜,1224h后,随着芽管的持续生长,形成新的隔膜和菌丝细胞,菌丝细胞多核;芽管及初生菌丝直径68μm,约为子囊孢子直径的...

Several species of Diaporthe (anamorph: Phomopsis) have been described causing rots in kiwifruits (Lee et al. 2001; Li et al. 2016). Between 15 and 24 October 2015, ripe kiwifruits (n = 70, 9% soluble solids) were collected from commercial vineyards of Actinidia deliciosa ‘Miliang No 1’ and A. chinensis ‘Jinyan’ in Chenzhou (25°32′N, Hunan Province...

Postharvest rot diseases of kiwifruit (Actinidia sp.) severely damage fruits during storage, transportation, and marketing. Botryosphaeria dothidea, Diaporthe ambigua, and D. lithocarpus have been reported to be associated with the disease in China (Li et al. 2016). In October to December 2015, fruits of four Actinidia chinensis cultivars (Jinyan,...

In this study, a high yield of crude polysaccharide (16.73 ± 0.756%) was extracted from the spent mushroom substrate of Lentinus edodes using a hot alkali extraction method. Two groups of polysaccharides (designated as LSMS-1 and LSMS-2) were obtained from the crude extract by size exclusion chromatography (SEC), and their molecular characteristics...

Pleurotus eryngii has been widely cultivated in China and massive spent mushroom substrate (SMS) has been discarded. To utilize spent substrate of P. eryngii effectively, SMS was extracted by hot alkali liquor and a high yield (12.18%) of crude polysaccharide (designated as CPS) was obtained, then a polysaccharide-protein complex (RPS) was purified...

Lentinula edodes, one of the most popular, edible mushroom species with a high content of proteins and polysaccharides as well as unique aroma, is widely cultivated in many Asian countries, especially in China, Japan and Korea. As a white rot fungus with lignocellulose degradation ability, L. edodes has the potential for application in the utilizat...

In recent years, the artificial cultivation of Morchella mushrooms that belong to Elata Clade, including Morchella elata, has been developed rapidly in China. However, the prominent problem of spawn aging has been frustrating the morel farming. In this paper, aging in M. elata was achieved from 12 to 17 subcultures and lifespan of 1536-2256h by suc...

The most saturated linkage map for Lentinula edodes to date was constructed based on a monokaryotic population of 146 single spore isolates (SSIs) using sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP), target region amplification polymorphism (TRAP), insertion-deletion (InDel) markers, and the mating-type loci. Five hundred and twenty-four markers w...

Phenotypic traits (physiological characteristics and somatic incompatibility) and genotypic traits (target region amplification polymorphism TRAP) were used to study the diversity of 32 main cultivars of Auricularia auricula-judae in China. Twenty seven important and stable physiological indexes were evaluated; somatic incompatibility test (SIT) re...

Rapid and correct authentication of commercial strains is still important in today’s mushroom industry. Here for the first time we reported the using of sequence characterized amplified region (SCAR) marker developed from inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism (IRAP) marker to identify Lentinula edodes strain. Genomic polymorphism among 44 sh...

Phellinus mushrooms can be easily identified to genus level by morphological characters; however, the taxonomy of species is very confused. The sclerotium producing mushroom, Hypholoma tuberosum is not recorded occurring in China. In this paper, the internal transcribed sequence (ITS) of two wild occurring mushrooms, P. igniarius CBL and H. tuberos...

The target region amplification polymorphism (TRAP) technique was utilized for assessing the genetic diversity of 55 wild strains and one cultivated strain of Lentinula edodes in China. From these strains, 932 DNA fragments were amplified using 12 primer combinations, 929 fragments (99.68%) of which were polymorphic between two or more strains. The...

In this study, microsatellite markers were utilized to reveal the genetic diversity of 56 strains of Lentinula edodes grown in China. A total of 224 DNA bands were detected through 25 primer pairs, of which, 223 bands (99.6%) were polymorphic between two or more strains. The variation in SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) DNA band patterns and average ge...