A new study reveals that the evolution of sunscreen pigments in lichen-forming fungi has been governed by the reshuffling of existing enzyme genes and novel accessory genes into new gene clusters. Lichens are diverse and colorful organisms that can be found in nearly every environment on Earth, from the arctic tundra to tropical rainforests. Due to the wide variety of their phenotypes and propensity to be misidentified as plants, fungi, or mosses, lichens have long been poorly understood. Lichens are composed of multiple distinct spe- cies, including at least one fungus and at least one photo- synthetic partner, usually a green alga or cyanobacterium. According to Theo Llewellyn, a PhD candidate at Imperial College London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, “Lichens are hugely important for Earth’s ecosystems and provide fantastic study systems for exploring many biologic- al questions. However, they are understudied and often overlooked, meaning that much less is known compared to other organism groups, especially in the field of genom- ics.” Llewellyn is doing his part to change this by focusing his PhD work on lichen-forming fungi, which are known to produce a huge variety of bioactive secondary metabolites.