Exploring the Ancient Partnership Between Mosses and Fungi: A Journey from Early Earth to Future Space Exploration

Mosses, those lush carpets of green that thrive in the most inhospitable of environments, have been a source of fascination for scientists and nature enthusiasts alike. Their ability to survive in the harshest of conditions, from the depths of the ocean to the peaks of mountains, is a testament to their resilience and tenacity. But what makes these organisms truly remarkable is their ancient partnership with fungi, a relationship that spans eons and has shaped the very fabric of our planet.

The next time you walk through the woods in the dead of winter, take a moment to look down. The only green you’ll see is the lush carpet of mosses that thrive underfoot. These organisms are not only a symbol of nature’s persistence but also a starting point for research with a scope that spans the ages. From ancient Earth to humanity’s future in space, the partnership between mosses and fungi is a story of collaboration, survival, and innovation.

Mosses made the transition to land 450 million years ago during the Ordovician period, a process that Björn Hamberger, a James K. Billman Jr., M.D., Endowed Professor in the Michigan State University College of Natural Science’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, suspects couldn’t have succeeded without some help from their fungal collaborators. When mosses made their landfall, they would have had to contend with a host of new and challenging variables, including water regulation, gravity, fluctuating temperatures, and exposure to UV light. Thankfully, mosses encountered a landscape already colonized by early fungi whose root-like networks, or mycelium, could absorb critical nutrients from the Earth. In exchange for these nutrients, early terrestrial plants provided the fungi with a carbon source, kickstarting a new relationship that has endured until the present day.

At least 80% of modern plants still collaborate in some way with fungi, getting help to grow stronger and to become more resilient. As we look into a future where plants need to sustain a growing population, this will be a critical factor. Working with mosses for over a decade, Hamberger and his research group have taken part in a special exhibit at the Detroit Science Gallery called “Fog of Dawn” in 2019 that featured mosses growing in terrariums aimed at mimicking the ambience of primordial Earth and the subsequent takeover of plants and fungi. The group also engineered moss to express foreign, modern land–plant biochemical pathways, producing products such as patchouli oil.

In the realm of space exploration, mosses and other plants could act as natural fabricators for building materials or medicines while converting carbon dioxide to oxygen during space flights. If you can bring plants with you on such a journey and give them the blueprints to create useful products, that will cut down on the immense weight of raw materials in orbit. Plus, when it comes to terraforming a place such as Mars, why not start with moss—a plant that’s successfully altered our own planet already?

With their latest research in The Plant Journal, the Hamberger lab hopes to further pull back the curtain on plant-microbial interactions and discover the ways moss and fungi communicate at a microscopic level. Over three months, the lab observed the moss, Physcomitrium patens, colonize different terrariums. Some habitats were entirely without fungi, while others were co-cultured with two species of the ground-dwelling fungi lineage, Mortirellaceae, which likely existed at the same time plants first began to conquer land. Using microscopy, genetic analysis, and Raspberry Pi microcomputers, the researchers tracked the subtle but distinct ways the moss interacted with its fungal neighbors.

The team discovered that these interactions came to depend on a unique addition to the cast—endobacteria within the fungi. These endobacteria provided a challenging question of their own. The endobacteria are completely dependent on their fungal host for survival, but it was unclear if they were bringing any value to the relationship. Generally, endobacteria are not seen as beneficial to fungi, with cells experiencing some big tradeoffs for housing them. However, when endobacteria are present, fungi can more easily interact with their mossy neighbors. For instance, one species of fungi seemed to “eat” the moss from the inside when its endobacteria were present. But in samples where the endobacteria were absent, it lived side-by-side with the moss, totally indifferent. Another species of fungi that provided benefits to the moss changed its behavior when its endobacteria were removed. The fungi started producing spore-like structures indicative of stress and no longer colonized the moss as they once did.

The Hamberger lab is looking forward to further unraveling these friend-or-foe relationships between moss, fungi, and endobacteria and what these discoveries mean for understanding life on Earth. Hamberger also hopes that this research might spur interest in crucial lifeforms we pass by every day, often without realizing it. Maybe it might inspire a little bit of appreciation for these cool organisms who can live under harsh conditions and are the first ones in spring to say, “Yay, let’s go,” when the snow melts and the sunlight returns.

More information: Davis Mathieu et al, Multilevel analysis between Physcomitrium patens and Mortierellaceae endophytes explores potential long-standing interaction among land plants and fungi, The Plant Journal (2024). DOI: 10.1111/tpj.16605

Provided by Michigan State University

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