Funded by: Swedish Research Council, NordForsk, Estonian Academy of Sciences
Fungi are notoriously difficult to trace and study in the field unless they produce fruiting bodies. This has hampered research on fungal population and community dynamics. Molecular methods changes this and enables identification of mycelium and spores from the environment if a library of reliably identified sequences from fruiting bodies is available for comparison, a technique commonly called DNA barcoding. UNITE is a sequence database and identification tool for fungi, primarily aimed at Nordic ectomycorrhizal fungi but now beginning to comprise also other fungal groups. UNITE is recently adapted for high-throughput sequencing and now accompanied by a project and laboratory management system.