1. Fungi

2. Fungi and You Believe it or not, fungi play an important role in
your life. The bread you eat, the salad you make,
and the medicine that you take when you are
sick may include various types of fungi or
products made from fungi.
1. List as many examples of fungi that you can.
2. How are fungi helpful to humans?
3. How are fungi harmful to humans?

3. What Are Fungi? Types: mushrooms, mold, yeast, mildew, truffles
Basic characteristics:
Heterotrophic eukaryotes
Many feed by absorbing nutrients from decaying matter
Others live as parasites absorb nutrients from their hosts

4. What Are Fungi?
Cell walls made of chitin (polymer of modified sugars, also found in arthropod exoskeletons)
Evidence that fungi are more closely related to animals than plants
Instead of photosynthesis, fungi produce enzymes that digest food outside their bodies, then absorb the small molecules released by the enzymes

5. Structure and Function
yeasts – single-celled
 mushrooms - multi-celled
hyphae - long, slender branching filaments
mycelium - mass of branching hyphae below the soil
mushroom fruiting body – reproductive structure that grows above soil
clusters of mushrooms are often part of the same mycelium -> same organism

6. Reproduction
Asexually – release spores that travel through air/water or break off a hypha
Sexually – transfer of nuclei and cytoplasm from one hypha to another, then create spores

7. Diversity of Fungi more than 100,000 species of fungi
major groups differ in their reproductive structures

8. The Ecology of Fungi
Decomposition champions help ecosystems by breaking down dead organisms/recycling essential elements and nutrients
Parasitic fungi cause serious diseases in plants and animals
Mutualistic associations with photosynthetic organisms in which both partners benefit

9. Decomposition
Organisms remove important trace elements and nutrients from the soil
Fungi release digestive enzymes that break down leaves, fruit, and other organic material into simple molecules
Fungi then recycles these elements and nutrients
If not returned, the soil would quickly be depleted

10. Parasitism Plant Diseases
Parasitic fungi cause diseases that threaten food crops
ex: mildews infect a wide variety of plants
ex: corn smut destroys corn kernels

11. Parasitism Animal Diseases Infect insects, frogs, and mammals
- ex: Cordyceps fungus infects grasshoppers in rain forests in Costa Rica
Grasshopper eats spores, germinate and produce enzymes that slowly digest all cells and tissues until the insect dies, hyphae develop on dead grasshopper and produce more spores spreading the infection

12. Human Diseases
Ex: athlete’s foot forms a mycelium in the outer layers of the skin, which produces a red, inflamed sore from which the spores can easily spread from person to person
Ex: yeast Candida albicans responsible for vaginal yeast infections and for infections of the mouth called thrush

13. Symbiotic Mutualism
Lichens - mutualistic association between fungus + photosynthetic organism
- Photosynthetic organism - green alga/ cyanobacterium
Algae photosynthesize  source of energy
Fungus  provides water and minerals

14. The Lichen is created between the fungus and the alga
                              Mr. Fungus is ready to greet our friend the alga
                              Friend alga cell is prepared to greet Mr. Fungus.
                                                                                                The Lichen is created between the fungus and the alga.
Friend alga cell is prepared to greet Mr. Fungus
Mr. Fungus is ready to greet our friend the alga
The Lichen is created between the fungus and the alga

15. Lichen =
Fungus + photosynthetic organism

16. Symbiotic Mutualism
Mycorrhizae – mutualistic relationships between fungus + plant roots
- Essential for plant growth
Fungi hyphae collect water/minerals and bring them to the roots, also release enzymes that free nutrients in the soil
Plants provide fungi w/ the products of photosynthesis (oxygen and sugar)