Mating type is the term applied to fungal hyphae that are found to have 2 or more distinct allele sites, distinguishing them as being either "male", or "female". It is necessary to have different mating types meet in order to have sexual reproduction. Divisions Chytridiomycota Zygomycota Ascomycota Basidiomycota The Fungi (singular: fungus) are a large group of organisms ranked as a kingdom within the Domain Eukaryota. ... A hypha (plural hyphae) is a long, branching filament that, with other hyphae, forms the feeding thallus of a fungus called the mycelium. ... An allele is any one of a number of viable DNA codings occupying a given locus (position) on a chromosome. ... Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that results in increasing genetic diversity of the offspring. ...

• Each mating type can signal its presence to others, (the female signals the male first by definition). This is done using pheremones, steroids, or carotenoids.

• In addition to male and female, there may also be the distinction between strong and weak (e.g. strong female).

Fanning honeybee exposes Nasonov gland (white-at tip of abdomen) releasing pheromone to entice swarm into an empty hive A pheromone is any chemical produced by a living organism that transmits a message to other members of the same species. ... Steroid skeleton. ... Carotenoids are organic pigments that are naturally occurring in plants and some other photosynthetic organisms like algae, some types of fungus and some bacteria. ...

Mechanism

In saccharomyces, there is a very complex system of mating type alternation from alpha to a. Species Saccharomyces bayanus Saccharomyces boullardii Saccharomyces cerevisiae Saccharomyces uvarum The genus Saccharomyces includes many different types of yeast and is involved in the kingdom of fungi. ...

• See the very well-written article: mating of yeast.

Bakers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a simple eukaryote that demonstrates simple sex differentiation and mating and is hence of great interest to science. ...

Trivia

• + or -, as discovered by the UC Berkeley professor Ralph Emerson.

• Nothing in the morphology tells you that the hyphae would be either male or female, but is distinguished as being two forms of the same species.

The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a prestigious, public, coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate and its bridge. ... Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ...

References

• C.J. Alexopolous, Charles W. Mims, M. Blackwell, Introductory Mycology, 4^th ed. (John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken NJ, 2004) ISBN: 0-471-52229-5