As a result of an unprecedented collaboration among a drug company, a university and conservationists, the Cornell Center for Fungal Biology began work on a biodiversity project in June of 1998.

An agreement announced on February 27, 1998 by Schering-Plough Corp., the Cornell Center for Fungal Biology, the Cornell Research Foundation, the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology and the Finger Lakes Land Trust provided researchers access to the ~400-acre Lindsay-Parsons Biodiversity Preserve owned by the land trust in upstate New York to "bioprospect" for potential medicines from fungi. It will be the first survey of its kind in a temperate zone habitat.


Mycologists under the direction of Gillian Turgeon, associate professor of plant pathology and director of the Cornell Center for Fungal Biology, will collect, photograph, identify, culture, and catalog specimens. In addition to collection of macrofungi, various techniques to isolate fungi from soil, plant material, and water will be used. DNA will be extracted from specimens collected on the Preserve and specific gene regions (currently using ITS) in the fungal genome will be sequenced. This information will be used in molecular phylogenetic studies and to develop protocols for identification of fungi based on molecular characters. The cultures will then be submitted to Schering-Plough Corp. for pharmaceutical screening. A portion of any money raised from new drugs will be contributed back to the land trust for conservation efforts.
 
(Adapted from a Cornell News Service press release by Roger Segelken.)

 

 


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