In filamentous fungi, vegetative cell fusion between genotypically distinct individuals leads to a cell-death reaction known as vegetative or heterokaryon incompatibility. Genes involved in this reaction have been characterised molecularly. We can now begin to get a better understanding of the mechanism and the biological significance of this intriguing phenomenon.

The eukaryotic circadian clocks are composed of autoregulatory circadian negative feedback loops that include both positive and negative elements. Investigations of the Neurospora circadian clock system have elucidated many of the basic mechanisms that underlie circadian rhythms, including negative feedback and light and temperature entrainment common to all eukaryotic clocks. The conservation ...

George Wells Beadle [7] and Edward Lawrie Tatum's 1941 article "Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora [8]" detailed their experiments on how genes [9] regulated chemical reactions, and how the chemical reactions in turn affected development in the organism. Beadle and Tatum experimented on Neurospora, a type of bread mold, and they concluded that mutations to genes [9] affected...

1. A method was developed to examine the turnover of nitrate reductase by the use of tungstate. 2. Evidence is presented which suggests that the disappearance of nitrate reductase activity from Neurospora mycelia exposed to non-inducing conditions is due to the disappearance of the enzyme protein(s) from the mycelia, and not merely due to the disappearance of its (their) catalytic power. 3. The...

which had been added bovine serum albumin. The latter has been shown to aid in the preservation of Neurospora mitochondria capable of coupling oxidation to phosphorylation.4 It would seem then that the inclusion of bovine serum albumin in the medium has allowed us to isolate mitochondrial preparations capable of demonstrating substrate-independent amino acid production. Summary.-The mitochondri...

Until recently there has been no demonstrated case in Neurospora in which the loss of activity of an essential enzyme could be attributed to gene mutation. It has been assumed from indirect evidence1 that gene mutations do cause such losses and thereby result in “blocks” of essential biochemical reactions. The products of the “blocked” reactions thus become essential growth substances for the m...

Soluble extracts of Neurospora crassa contain a single, electrophoretically distinct, superoxide dismutase. This enzyme has been isolated and has been found to be a bluegreen, copperand zinc-containing enzyme, similar to that already described from bovine tissues and from garden peas. The molecular weight was ,approximately 31,000, and the enzyme appeared to be composed of 2 subunits of equal s...

Fungi respond and adapt to many environmental signals including light. The photobiology of fungi has been extensively investigated, but in recent years the identification of the first fungal photoreceptor, WC-1 in the ascomycete Neurospora crassa, and the discovery that similar photoreceptors are required for photoreception in other ascomycete, basidiomycete and zygomycete fungi has allowed the...

We have developed soluble extracts from Neurospora crassa capable of accurately initiating the transcription of cloned Neurospora protein-encoding genes by RNA polymerase II in vitro. The genes encoding glutamate dehydrogenase (am) and histones H3 and H4 were transcribed by the extracts, and transcription was sensitive to alpha-amanitin at 1 mg/ml. The 5' heterogeneity of the in vitro initiatio...