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Record W4411012216 · doi:10.1111/1462-2920.70112

A Biosynthetic and Taxonomic Atlas of the Global Lichen Holobiont

2025· article· en· W4411012216 on OpenAlexafffund
Samantha C. Waterworth, Susan Egbert, John L. Sorensen, Barry R. O’Keefe, John A. Beutler

Bibliographic record

VenueEnvironmental Microbiology · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldAgricultural and Biological Sciences
TopicLichen and fungal ecology
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Manitoba
FundersNational Cancer InstituteNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaNational Institutes of Health
KeywordsBiologyLichenMicrobacteriumHolobiontMetagenomicsAnthozoaEcologyBacteria16S ribosomal RNASymbiosisGeneGenetics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Lichens are pioneer species in several ecosystems, and as such are found in a variety of geographic regions and environments. Here, inspection of metagenomic data from 794 lichen samples from 34 countries reveals the presence of a complex holobiont harbouring remarkable biosynthetic capabilities, particularly in the bacterial consortia, a component that has been somewhat underappreciated. While bacteria were consistently present, their abundance varied among lichen taxa. Common bacterial genera included Microbacterium, Terribacillus, and JABEUN01 (an Acidimicrobiaceae bacterium awaiting Latin binomial naming assignment) albeit in low abundance. Lichenihabitans and Sphingomonas genera were moderately abundant, present in approximately 30% of samples, and exhibited an enrichment in the number of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) predicted to encode secondary metabolites (biosynthetic potential). We found that both fungal and bacterial biosynthetic repertoires appeared to follow genus-specific patterns but that there was greater relative homogeneity of BGCs in the fungal genera. The substantial biosynthetic diversity within lichen holobionts is evident in our findings, with the lichen-associated bacteria emerging as a promising potential source for sustainable drug discovery.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.822
Threshold uncertainty score0.258

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.003
GPT teacher head0.153
Teacher spread0.150 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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