Secrets of cooperation between trees and fungi revealed

Plants gained their ancestral toehold on dry land with considerable help from their fungal friends. Now, millennia later, that partnership is being exploited as a strategy to bolster biomass production for next generation biofuels. The genetic mechanism of this kind of symbiosis, which contributes to the delicate ecological balance in healthy forests, also provides insights into plant health that may enable more efficient carbon sequestration and enhanced phytoremediation, using plants to clean up environmental contaminants.