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Movement is one of the defining characteristics of living organisms. Contrary to common perceptions, fungi show a remarkable range of motion. Motion inside fungal cells, including mass flow of cytoplasm, was first observed by Antonie van Leewenhoek and influenced the eighteenth-century view of fungi as an eccentric branch of the animal kingdom (Ainsworth 1976). This flow of cytoplasm accompanies the...
The fungal pathogen Cladosporium fulvum (syn. Passalora fulva; Braun et al. 2003) causes leaf mould of tomato, a disease first described by Cooke (1883). The fungus presumably originates from South America, the center of origin of the cultivated tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) and related wild species. Worldwide, the fungus causes serious economic losses to commercially grown tomatoes that lack Cladosporium...
All eukaryotic organisms must be able to sense and respond to extracellular signals for regulating various developmental and differentiation processes. The cyclic AMP (cAMP) signaling and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase pathways are among the best studied signal transduction pathways in eukaryotes. The key components of the cAMP-PKA pathway include the adenylate cyclase (AC) and regulatory...
The secretome of plant-associated fungi and oomycetes has been the subject of much research since the publication about 10 years ago of the first edition of “The Mycota: Plant Relationships”. The concept that filamentous microbes require secreted proteins to alter their environment and the organisms they colonize is not particularly novel, but technology has matured to the point where it is nowadays...
Cells of higher plants are surrounded by the wall, a resilient and heterogeneous network made up of different classes of polymers, mainly cellulose, xyloglucan, pectin and structural proteins. Current cell wall models propose a structure in which cellulose microfibrils are coated with xyloglucan and embedded in multiple layers of pectic polysaccharides (Carpita and Gibeaut 1993; Ha et al. 1997; Reiter...
Fungi that parasitize plants have at their disposal a large and diverse set of tools required for successful colonization of their hosts. Among the most effective of these strategies is the production of phytotoxic compounds that play multiple roles in plant disease. These range from toxins that facilitate infection by suppressing normal plant defense pathways to ones that alter normal metabolic processes...
Apoptosis was originally defined in mammals, where it plays a major role in controlling normal development. Apoptosis and several other forms of programmed cell death (PCD) have since been defined in metazoan as well as in plants, fungi and even in bacteria (Bredesen et al. 2006). For simplicity, when referring to cell death processes in plants and fungi we use the terms apoptosis or PCD throughout...
Mutualistic ectomycorrhizal symbionts are of major importance as drivers of ecological function and evolutionary processes in forest ecosystems. Within days after their emergence in the upper soil profiles, such as the organic humus and mor layer, most of the short roots of shrubs and trees are colonized by ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi (Taylor et al. 2000; Ruess et al. 2003; Adams et al. 2006). In...
Located at the interface with the soil, plant roots are the preferred niche for many soil fungi that live in the rhizosphere as saprotrophs or are directly associated to the photosynthetic plants as symbionts. Among the latter, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi represent a vital component in plant ecosystems: they have a widespread distribution in very diverse environments (Smith and Read 2008) and...
The modern approach to biology emphasizes the workings and system integration of individual organisms, with microbial infections usually considered in a disease context, yet it is benign and mutualistic symbioses that actually dominate the biosphere. Even our own healthy bodies host complex microbial consortia (Gill et al. 2006). The ecological importance of lichens (fungi hosting green algae or cyanobacteria;...
Lichens are the symbiotic phenotype of nutritionally specialized fungi, ecologically obligate biotrophs which acquire fixed carbon from a population of minute photobiont cells (Honegger 1991). Lichenforming fungi (also referred to as lichen mycobionts) are, like plant or animal pathogens or mycorrhizal fungi, a polyphyletic, taxonomically diverse group of nutritional specialists, but are otherwise...
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