The Environment and Climate theme plays crucial role in securing a research grant to investigate how fungi affect iron in wood

Dimitrios Floudas is excited about the work ahead!

Activities organised by the LINXS theme Environment and Climate played a key role in securing a four year long research grant from Formas, aiming to understand how fungi affect the small amount of iron found in wood.

Theme leader Dimitrios Floudas and theme member Milda Pucetaite, both researchers at the Department of Biology at Lund University, highlight how one of the theme’s early workshops, focusing on the role of metals in decomposition processes and particularly the role of iron, helped to identify the key gap which their research project is aiming to address.

– During the workshop we got inspired, and after discussing, we decided that there was a knowledge gap we could try to cover within this important area, says Dimitrios Floudas, associate senior lecturer at the Department of Biology.

– We have also been working quite closely in the core group of our theme, which has made us a good team. This aspect helped a lot in writing the proposal.

He says that their success in securing the grant shows how the theme is reaching one of its aims: to initiate projects that expand knowledge of complex, environmental processes related to ecosystem functioning, global change, and anthropogenic activities, through the use of X-rays and neutrons.

The project will specifically focus on iron speciation, mobilization, and translocation in wood during decay by brown-rot fungi. Iron is a very important metal, not only for cellular function, but in the case of brown rot fungi, also for wood decay because it participates in oxidative non-enzymatic decomposition of carbohydrates through a Fenton reaction.

X-ray microscopy (STXM) and nanoSIMS to understand processes connected to iron

Milda says that the research is novel in that it will apply techniques in a complementary manner.

To be able to understand processes connected to iron, Dimitrios, Milda and their team will use X-ray microscopy (STXM) and nanoSIMS (Nanoscale Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry).  

They will also use the new instrument AFM-IR at MAX IV to understand wood decomposition connecting to iron. This is a major novelty for the research project, as the new instrument affords an increased level of resolution for wood decay. Another new approach is using nanoSIMS to see how iron is transported by fungi.

– We have literally zero knowledge about it, but brown-rot fungi (and their iron chemistry) literally are the main decomposers and therefore major carbon recycling organisms in boreal and coniferous ecosystems, says Dimitrios Floudas.

The partial funding and purchasing of the AFM-IR instrument for super resolution infrared microspectroscopy was in part enabled by the LINXS network. Milda Pucetaite, theme member Edith Hammer, also researcher at the Biology Department, and Karina Thånell, researcher at MAX IV, and co-theme leader of the AIDA theme (Advanced Imaging and Data Analysis), were all co-applicants for the Faculty of Science Infrastructure funding that enabled the purchasing. Its placement at MAX IV is strategically important for combining with the X-ray experiments performed there. 

Milda Pucetaite says:

– I think that the application of a range of beyond state-of-the-art approaches in a complementary manner is something very novel in this project. It will help us answer questions about the role of iron in fungal decomposition processes at a scale and level of detail that was not available until now.