Basal fungal lineages are usually not focus of current research. However, as one out of three basal fungal lineages chytridiomycetes might have an important impact for a future bioeconomy. Within the chytridiomycetes the phylum Neocallimastigomycota contains strictly anaerobic fungi usually inhabitating the digestive tract and rumen of herbivorous animals (Shelest and Voigt, 2014). As part of the rumen microbiota they are remarkable biomass degraders, able to simultaneously saccharify and ferment cellulosic and hemicellulosic fractions of multiple untreated grasses and crop residues (Noha et al. 2013). However, only few species can be cultivated in axenic cultures in the lab and genomic information is scarce. Due to the cooperation with Kerstin Voigt from Jena Microbial Resource Collection access to several Neocallimastix strains is available. Two of them have been reported to be culturable in single culture (Teunissen et al., 1991) and have also been fully sequenced. Aim of this project is to establish a bioreactor process to produce lignocellulytic enzymes and to screen the genome for the respective genes to be able to produce selected enzymes heterologously in large scale.