Comment by anotherpaul

It's great for the student. And it shows that the lab she worked in and the university are able to do this type of science.

Sequencing a new fungus is not that rare. It's done all the time these past years. People discover new species all the time.

What is cool is that they already know a bit about where this fungus lives and what it might do.

The hard biology will be go actually culture it, test it's abilities and see what else it can do.

I mean the article is very short so this is me speculating, but if it is of interest they might figure out what the symbiosis really means to the plant and the fungus.

Also discovering the gene clusters that produce the active compounds will be cool and interesting.

Edit: just so it's clear, its amazing that the student was involved and had the trive to do this. It's easy to not be curious but she was and also she was in an environment where her curiosity was taken serious. That's a great feat of the superiviser or whoever else was involved