Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 生物資訊與訊息傳遞研究所 === 102 === Gastrodia is a plant genus in the Orchidaceae family. It has economic value because the rhizomes of Gastrodia are a prominent herbal medicine that can treat headache and hypertension. A previous study indicates that Gastrodia has no chlorophyll and relies on symbiotic fungi for obtaining nutrients. Therefore, to understand the relationship between Gastrodia and the symbiotic fungi is important. In this project, we probe the fungal community in Gastrodia flavilabella tubers and study whether specific fungi co-exist with the tubers. We collaborated with Dr. Huang-Mo Sung’s group, who collected five Gastrodia tuber samples and their surrounding soil. We extracted total DNAs from each sample and used a primer to amplify 28S rDNA sequences for Illumina sequencing. To determine the taxonomy of the reads, we aligned all reads to the NCBI large subunit rRNA references. We also used FastUniFrac to compare the fungal communities in the tubers and their surrounding soil. Our study showed that the fungal communities in all tuber samples were less complex than those in the soil. The most abundant fungi in the tubers were Mycena species. In contrast, Mycena species were only minorities in the soil. We also found that the fungal communities in all Gastrodia tubers were more similar to each other than to those in the surrounding soils, indicating a preference of certain fungi in Gastrodia flavilabella tubers. Despite the similar fungal preference, we found that the proportions of Mycena species in the tubers could be very different, indicating individual differences.
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