Wu Gang, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences: Deeply cultivating unpopular people with love

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Drawing a "family tree" for the Bolete family, conducting popular science lectures, and exploring artificial planting.

Wu Gang's office is not difficult to find, just follow the smell of mushrooms

It's a little hard to turn around in the office

Six years of hard work, drawing a "family tree" for Boletus

In 2009, Wu just entered the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences as a graduate student

"Seeing Hand Green" belong to different genera, and it is not easy to distinguish them

This also means that Wu Gang has to challenge the world-wide problems recognized by the industry

After extensive literature reading and preliminary experiments, Wu Gang finally screened more than 800 specimens and nearly 300 species under the Boletaceae family for research

While collecting specimens through interlibrary loan, Wu Gang frequently went to the field to collect specimens

It took 6 years for Wu Gang to write only one paper, which also laid the framework for the classification of Boletus species, and was called a "milestone" research achievement by international peers

Species classification, laying the foundation for subsequent research

Specializing in the taxonomy of boletus for more than 10 years, Wu Gang can basically judge which species it is and whether it is poisonous from the appearance of common boletus just by looking at it

Despite this, Wu Gang said that there are still many unknowns in his research field.

Today, Wu Gang, who built the Boletaceae classification framework, still flips through literature and looks at specimens when he has time

The taxonomy of species is unpopular, and the classification and description of old species are even less popular

Apply what you have learned, and scientific research is "planted" on the earth

"You can't just focus on publishing papers in scientific research

There is a "poisonous mushroom identification group" in Wu Gang's mobile phone

Boletus is an important edible wild mushroom locally in Yunnan, and collecting wild mushrooms is an important source of income for many mountain people

"One is that it is safe to eat, and the other is that it does not need to coexist with specific tree species as much as possible.
These are ultimately reflected in genes
.
Our research found that the ability of different boletus to degrade lignocellulose and utilize nutrients is strong or weak
.
If If you want to cultivate and develop, you should choose species with stronger degradation or absorption capacity as much as possible
.
" Wu Gang hopes that based on the classification of boletus, we can find those boletus species that are easier to achieve artificial cultivation at the molecular level, so as to provide future artificial strains provide a shortcut
.