Neurospora crassa

Hyphae of Neurospora crassa

Neurospora crassa is a red mold from the Department of ascomycetes ( Ascomycota ).

He is a well-known model organism in biology, which is easy to breed. It has a haploid life cycle that allows easy genetic analysis. Neurospora was chosen by Edward Tatum and George Wells Beadle as the object. For their work they received the Nobel Prize in 1958. You put the mold from ionizing radiation to induce mutations. Then they examined the metabolic pathways for defects in enzyme activities. From their observations they derived the one- gene-one enzyme hypothesis, which, however, only limited valid today.

In April 2003, the genome of N. crassa was released as durchsequenziert in Nature. It is about 43 megabases in size and contains approximately 10,000 genes.

It occurs naturally mainly in the tropical and subtropical regions and mainly on decaying plant material.

System

New to Hibbett et al, 2007:. A higher-level phylogenetic classification of the Fungi. - Mycological Research 111, 509-547.