The the presence of these fungi within the tissues of leaves and twigs is not recognized by most biologists, and this lack of knowledge led to a bad mistake on the part of researchers who were extracting DNA from the leaves of spruce trees. Instead of a study of spruce, they published a study of fungi! One result of this study, however, has been to publicize the existence of endophytes. Another group working on bamboos published a paper called "Bamboozled again." Why do you think they did this?
Although endophytes have been studied fairly well in northern temperate regions, they are virtually unknown in the warmer temperate and tropical regions of the world. Therefore, the work you do in lab will serve as a preliminary survey to provide information on whether such a study would be productive in southern Louisiana.
As a first step you will be given references to research papers that discuss isolation of fungal endophytes from among the plant tissues and the growth form of endophytes. Our study will focuss on obtaining siolates in culture. Generally, most species are slow-growing when they are placed in culture, and this will be an indication that they are endophytes rather than pathogenic or saprobic fungi that live on the surface of the leaf. These faster growing fungi will be a problem during isolation of the endophytes.
During the semester you will learn to do literature searches the easy way (LSU Library LAN), design studies, apply sterile techniques, and analyze data. You also will learn that research has certain frustrations.
This study will continue throughout the semester, and some of the work will be done independently be each research group. The entire class will contribute to the project and the results will be analyzed statistically with the help of your instructor. Each laboratory group will turn in a written report of the pooled results. The report will be in the form of a paper published in the journal Mycologia.