Metagenome-assembled genomes derived from Tagirdzhanova et al. 2024: Microbial occurrence and symbiont detection in lichen metagenomes. Metagenome-assembled genomes derived from Tagirdzhanova et al. 2024: Microbial occurrence and symbiont detection in lichen metagenomes

Lichens are the archetypal symbiosis and the one for which the term was coined. Although application of shotgun sequencing techniques has shown that many lichen symbioses can harbour more symbionts than the canonically recognized fungus and photobiont, no global census of lichen organismal composition has been undertaken. Here, we analyze the genome content of 437 lichen metagenomes from six continents, and show that four bacterial lineages occur in the majority of lichen symbioses, at a frequency on par with algal photobionts.