The formation of the pileus in homobasidiomycete fungi is essential for sexual reproduction, because the pileus bears the hymenium, a layer of cells that includes the specialised basidia in which nuclear fusion, meiosis and sporulation occur. The developmental mutant ichijiku of Coprinus cinereus fails to develop a differentiated pileus at the apex of the primordial shaft, which is the basal pa...

Measurements of the specific activities of representative enzymes of the pentose phosphate cycle, Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas (EMP) pathway and the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle in Coprinus cinereus sporophores at different stages of development indicate that glycolysis is the major route of carbohydrate catabolism throughout sporophore development. Enzymes of the pentose phosphate cycle were alway...

The principal objective of this study was to acquire basic data regarding the mycelial growth characteristics for the artificial cultivation of Coprinus comatus. 12 URP primers were employed to evaluate the genetic relationships of C. comatus, and the results were divided into three groups. Among six kinds of mushroom media, MYP medium was selected as the most favorable culture medium for C. co...

In this study the effects of an aqueous suspension of a commercial preparation of the mushroom Coprinus comatus on oxidative stress induced in rats by alloxane and carbon tetrachloride was examined. The effects were estimated from changes in the biochemical parameters (xanthine oxidase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase activity, reduced glutathione content, and extent of lipid peroxidation) ...

We have constructed cosmid libraries from electrophoretically separated chromosomes of the basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus. These libraries greatly facilitate the isolation of genes by complementation of mutant phenotypes and are particularly useful for map-based cloning strategies. From a library constructed from two co-migrating C.cinereus chromosomes, we isolated a clone that complements the...

Mushrooms are believed to have a great potential for production of bioactive metabolites e. g. terpenes, a group of interesting compounds with diverse chemical properties such as antitumour and antibacterial activity. Cop6 is a terpene cyclase isolated from the mushroom Coprinus cinereus that catalyzes the cyclization of farnesyl diphosphate (FPP) to mainly αcuprenene. In this study gas chromat...

The A mating type genes of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus encode two families of dissimilar homeodomain proteins (HD1 and HD2). The proteins heterodimerize when mating cells fuse to generate a transcriptional regulator that promotes expression of genes required for early steps in sexual development. In previous work we showed that heterodimerization brings together different functional domains ...