Basidiomycete fungi are essential for degradation of wood in natural eco-systems and therefore a crucial part of the global carbon cycle. Genomic and post-genomic studies into several basidiomycete species have given insight into the process of wood decay, but these studies have not addressed cold-adapted wood decaying basidiomycetes. One of the unanswered questions is whether these fungi will remain efficient in wood decay when temperatures increase due to global climate change. This could have a significant effect on carbon cycling in arctic and sub-arctic regions. In this project we aim to evaluate the wood decay ability of cold-adapted isolates from Finnish Lapland of the white rot basidiomycete Phlebia centrifuga and the brown rot basidiomycete Gloeophyllum sepiarium, at two temperatures (15°C and 28°C), and compare this to isolates of these species from Southern Europe. We aim to analyze their differences in a systems biology fashion for which the combination of resources requested from EMSL is essential. We aim to de novo sequence the two P. centrifuga and two G. sepiarium isolates. For analysis of wood decay, samples from all four strains grown on wood will be taken at two time points and used for extraction of RNA for transcriptomics. Extracellular and intracellular metabolites and proteins will be extracted from the cultures and used for metabolomics, and proteomics and enzyme assays, respectively. Based on the genomic data, genes encoding enzymes involved in wood decay of which the orthologs in the isolates contain differences in their amino acid sequence will be studied in more detail. In addition, genes that are higher expressed at 15°C and that have paralogs that are higher expressed at 28°C will be selected for heterologous expression. These genes and their orthologs/paralogs (100 genes in total) will be synthesized and expressed in Pichia pastoris to compare their biochemical properties, in particular their temperature profile. The combined data will demonstrate whether cold-adapted isolates are mainly efficient in wood decay at low temperatures or whether they can maintain their efficiency at increasing temperatures. These insights will also be of relevance to mathematic models describing global climate change, due to the important role these fungi have in cold climates. We hypothesize enzymes from cold-adapted isolates may reach the same saccharification efficiency as mesophilic/thermophilic enzymes, but at lower temperature, which could benefit the production of biofuels and biochemicals, especially in SSF applications.