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What's a Fungus?

Started by ionela, May 20, 2010, 12:27:45 PM

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jonela

Fungi or mushrooms are a peculiar group of living organisms. Are they plants? Are they animals? Are they something different?

For a long time they've been viewed as plants and studied likewise, under the name of Mycophyta - a phylum included in the Plantae Kingdom. Even though they aren't green and can't synthesize their own food (organic matter) via fotosynthesis, their growing on the soil (and  other various substrates) and immmobility made them look more like plants than animals. Contrariwise, the molecular biology has proved that mushrooms are more related to animals than plant (biochemically and genetically speaking).

The differences between fungi and other types of living beings are quite huge. 

Like plants, fungi do have cell walls, while animal cells are nude. The cell walls of a fungus contain chitin and no cellulose at all. Chitin is a derivative of glucose prevalent in the animal kingdom (i.e. invertebrates).

Fungi have no chlorophyl - the green pigment required for fotosinthesis. That is why they can't assimilate inorganic compounds, their nutrition being heterotrophic. It means that mushrooms need performed organic matter as "food" and use it as energy source. They can decompose dead organic compounds which is called saprotrophic nutrition. They can use as food and energy source other living organisms which is the parasitic nutrition. They can live in symbiosis with plants, animals or other fungi. Shortly, they can do anything but autotrophic nutrition! On the other hand, animals are also heterotrophic organisms, but they ingest organic compounds, while fungi absorb them!

One can always observe a plant or an animal, but fungi are cryptic. They grow inside the soil, on dead organic mater, on/ inside living creatures and we don't even know they are already there. Not until they reproduce. What we call "mushroom" or "mold" is actually the reproducing organ of the fungus. It is also called fruit body, in analogy with higher plants that produce fruits with seeds. Mushrooms don't produce real fruits, nor seeds. That is why I avoid using the term "fruit" when it comes to fungi. I consider accurate the term "spore body", because fungi are not plants, have no fruits and produce spores. I'll say more about spores when I reach the Reproduction chapter of this story. So, I spore body is what we usually call stipe (stem) and cap. 
"One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield."

lenaanthony

Hmm... I read and understand that fungi come from a completely separate derivative, different from plants, animals and also bacteria, known as a kingdom. Also their fungal cell walls, as explained by you, are called chitins, which varies from the cellulose walls of plants.

Anam

Well informed by my fellow members, fungus is neither a plant, nor an animal. It looks like a plant but the difference is that it can not make food for itself like plants do by photosynthesis. It is right that they belong to a different kingdom in which they absorb nutrients from their surrounding to get food for them self.

jonela

Fungi are very interesting from many points of view. For a long time they were thought to be plants, although biochemically they are more like animals.
"One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield."