Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Speaker:
Garima Singh (Department of Biology, University of Padova, Italy).
Abstract:
Fungi occupy an unusually broad ecological and cultural spectrum. They are integral components of natural ecosystems, essential to food and fermentation, prolific producers of bioactive compounds, and, at times, serious agents of disease in plants and humans. This diversity of roles is not accidental but is deeply rooted in the extraordinary evolutionary and chemical diversity of the fungal kingdom.
A central yet still underexplored feature of fungal diversity is their capacity for secondary metabolism. Fungal metabolites mediate ecological interactions, shape symbioses, and enable adaptation to biotic and abiotic stress, while also forming the molecular basis of many compounds of pharmaceutical and industrial relevance. Understanding how this chemical diversity is distributed across fungal lineages, and identifying most promising resources, remains a major challenge.
In this talk, I will discuss how comparative genomics and computational approaches, integrated with the biology of secondary metabolism, can be used to dissect the ecological and evolutionary drivers of fungal chemical diversity. By linking biosynthetic potential to ecology and phylogeny, we can begin to identify fungal taxa and metabolic pathways that are both ecologically significant and of high biotechnological potential.
Speaker:
Garima Singh (Department of Biology, University of Padova, Italy).
Abstract:
Fungi occupy an unusually broad ecological and cultural spectrum. They are integral components of natural ecosystems, essential to food and fermentation, prolific producers of bioactive compounds, and, at times, serious agents of disease in plants and humans. This diversity of roles is not accidental but is deeply rooted in the extraordinary evolutionary and chemical diversity of the fungal kingdom.
A central yet still underexplored feature of fungal diversity is their capacity for secondary metabolism. Fungal metabolites mediate ecological interactions, shape symbioses, and enable adaptation to biotic and abiotic stress, while also forming the molecular basis of many compounds of pharmaceutical and industrial relevance. Understanding how this chemical diversity is distributed across fungal lineages, and identifying most promising resources, remains a major challenge.
In this talk, I will discuss how comparative genomics and computational approaches, integrated with the biology of secondary metabolism, can be used to dissect the ecological and evolutionary drivers of fungal chemical diversity. By linking biosynthetic potential to ecology and phylogeny, we can begin to identify fungal taxa and metabolic pathways that are both ecologically significant and of high biotechnological potential.
