A connection between fungal hydrophobins and soil water repellency?

This Idea/Viewpoint paper aims to bring together two hitherto relatively disjointed areas of research: work on soil water repellency and our rapidly increasing knowledge about fungal hydrophobins. Water repellency is a significant problem worldwide, with important environmental consequences, for which proximate causes are poorly understood. Hydrophobins are a recently discovered, seemingly ubiquitous class of fungal proteins that have numerous roles in the life history of filamentous fungi through their ability to act at surfaces. Hydrophobins are potent surfactants; they also have the ability to self-assemble at hydrophobic-hydrophilic interfaces, with concurrent changes in surface properties. Potential, but as yet unexplored consequences of hydrophobin presence in soils are discussed, and it is concluded that the study of water repellency (and soil ecology in general) could profit by applying some, of the knowledge obtained from molecular/biochemical studies on hydrophobins to the soil environment. (c) 2005 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.