Fungal mycelia and bacterial thiamine establish a mutualistic growth mechanism

Physical spaces and nutrients are prerequisites to the survival of organisms while few interspecies mutual strategies are documented that satisfies them. Here we discovered a mutualistic mechanism between filamentous fungus and bacterium, Aspergillus nidulans and Bacillus subtilis. The bacterial cells co-cultured with the fungus traveled along mycelia depending on their flagella and dispersed farther with the expansion of fungal colony, indicating that the fungal mycelia supply space for bacteria to migrate, disperse and proliferate. Transcriptomic, genetic, molecular mass and imaging analyses demonstrated that the bacteria reach the mycelial edge and supply thiamine to the growing hyphae, resulting in a promotion of hyphal growth. The thiamine transfer from bacteria to the thiamine non-auxotrophic fungus is directly demonstrated by stable isotope labeling. The simultaneous spatial and metabolic interactions demonstrated in this study, reveal a mutualism that facilitates the communicating fungal and bacterial species to obtain environmental niche and nutrient respectively.