Fungus in research tools

Fungi are used as a basic material for the study of various fundamental biological processes. As
many fungi grow very first and require a shorter period to complete one generation, they are
good research material for many geneticists. Model fungi are commonly studied yeasts, moulds,
mushrooms, filamentous or other fungal species chosen for the ease of investigating particular
biological phenomena. Research on these fungi provide biological insights relevant to other
organisms in areas such as genetics, cell biology, meiosis and pathogenesis. Neurospora has
become these days an ideal material for the study of laws of heredity by geneticists. Because of
the production of spores by meiosis, many of them prove good material for cytologists. Many
biochemical processes are also studied exclusively by using several fungi. According to Rusch
(1968) Physarum polycephalum, a slime mold is a very good material for the study of DNA
synthesis, morphogenesis, miotic cycle and many other processes.
The fungi Neurospora is considerably utilized in biological study. They belong to Genus
Ascomycetes. It is also known as Drosophila of the Kingdom Plantae as it is vastly used for
research and experiments. Neurospora plays an important role in biological research. It grows
easily and is haploid. Hence, the traits are expressed in the offspring. It is easy to artificially
induce hereditary changes in plants by either physical or chemical agents. The nutritional
requirements of Neurospora are simple because they may be easily cultivated on a simple
medium with few salts, sugars, and biotin. It rapidly grows and reproduces. Analysing tetrads is
simple in the case of Neurospora. The genome of their seven chromosomes is well sequenced.
Studies of circadian rhythms, population biology, mitochondrial import, DNA repair and
recombination, DNA methylation, etc., have benefited greatly from the use of Neurospora.
Fungi have great prospects for synthesis, applications and developing new products in
nanotechnology. In recent times, fungi use in nanotechnology is gaining more attention because
of the ecological friendly state of their metabolite-mediated nanoparticles, their safety,
amenability and applications in diverse fields. The diversity of the metabolites such as enzymes,
polysaccharide, polypeptide, protein and other macro-molecules has made fungi a veritable tool
for nanoparticles synthesis. Mechanism of fungal nano-biosynthesis from the molecular
perspective has been extensively studied through various investigations on its green synthesized
metal nano-particles. Fungal nanobiotechnology has been applied in agricultural, medical and
industrial sectors for goods and services improvement and delivery to mankind. Agriculturally, it
has found applications in plant disease man-agement and production of environmentally friendly,
non-toxic insecticides, fungicides to enhance agricultural production in general. Medically,
diagnosis and treatment of diseases, especially of microbial origin have been improved with
fungal nanoparticles through more efficient drug delivery systems with great benefits to phar-
maceutical industries. This review therefore explored fungal nanobiotechnology; mechanism of
synthesis, char-acterization and potential applications in various fields of human endeavours for
goods and services delivery.
Mycology is the study of fungi while nanotechnology is the study involving the design, synthesis
and application of technologically important particles of nano size (Sousa et al., 2020). In this
light, the design and synthesis of metal nanoparticles using fungi is termed mycofabrication. In
recent times, the fungal system has emerged as important bionanofactory for the synthesis of
nanoparticles of gold, sil-ver, CdS, platinum etc. Fungal bionanofactories has produced
important nanoparticles of good dimensions and monodispersity (Guilger-Casa-grande and Lima,
2019).Furthermore, fungi are reported to produce proteins in large quanti-ties, they are important
in the significant large-scale production of nanoparticles. Most fungal proteins are known for
hydrolyzing metalions. More so, fungi are easily isolated and cultured. More so, fungal
nanoparticles of enzymes, polysaccharides, protein and other macro-molecules are diverse in size
and mostly secreted extracellularly. Therefore, fungal enzymes’ extraction and purification is less
compli-cated than synthetic processes as fungi play a critical role in preventing environmental
pollution. The use of microorganisms in the synthesis of nanoparticles is an appealing green
nanotechnology choice and the use of biological systems, like fungi, has recently emerged as a
novel approach.
Otherwise, Basidiomycota are a large and diverse phylum of fungi. They can make bioactive
metabolites that are used or have inspired the synthesis of antibiotics and agrochemicals.
Terpenoids are the most abundant class of natural products encountered in this taxon. Other
natural product classes have been described, including polyketides, peptides, and indole
alkaloids. The discovery and study of natural products made by basidiomycete fungi has so far
been hampered by several factors, which include their slow growth and complex genome
architecture. Recent developments of tools for genome and metabolome studies are allowing
researchers to more easily tackle the secondary metabolome of basidiomycete fungi. Inexpensive
long-read whole-genome sequencing enables the assembly of high-quality genomes, improving
the scaffold upon which natural product gene clusters can be predicted. CRISPR/Cas9-based
engineering of basidiomycete fungi has been described and will have an important role in linking
natural products to their genetic determinants. Platforms for the heterologous expression of
basidiomycete genes and gene clusters have been developed, enabling natural product
biosynthesis studies. Molecular network analyses and publicly available natural product
databases facilitate data dereplication and natural product characterisation. These technological
advances combined are prompting a revived interest in natural product discovery from
basidiomycete
As simple eukaryotic organisms, fungi are important model research organisms. Many advances
in modern genetics were achieved by the use of the red bread mold Neurospora crassa.
Additionally, many important genes originally discovered in S. cerevisiae served as a starting
point in discovering analogous human genes. As a eukaryotic organism, the yeast cell produces
and modifies proteins in a manner similar to human cells, as opposed to the
bacterium Escherichia coli, which lacks the internal membrane structures and enzymes to tag
proteins for export. This makes yeast a much better organism for use in recombinant DNA
technology experiments. Like bacteria, yeasts grow easily in culture, have a short generation
time, and are amenable to genetic modification.
Many secondary metabolites of fungi are of great commercial importance. Fungi naturally
produce antibiotics to kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria, limiting their competition in the
natural environment. Important antibiotics, such as penicillin and the cephalosporins, can be
isolated from fungi. Valuable drugs isolated from fungi include the immunosuppressant drug
cyclosporine (which reduces the risk of rejection after organ transplant), the precursors of steroid
hormones, and ergot alkaloids used to stop bleeding. Psilocybin is a compound found in fungi
such as Psilocybe semilanceata and Gymnopilus junonius, which have been used for their
hallucinogenic properties by various cultures for thousands of years
New research has also looked at the use of fungi to produce mycodiesel. Mycodiesel is a novel
name applied to the volatile organic products made by fungi that have fuel potential. The latest
discovery is that of an endophytic Hypoxylon/Nodulosporium species, or one that lives within a
plant, that makes the compound cineole along with a number of other cyclohexanes (colorless,
flammable liquids found in petroleum crude oil and volcanic gases) and compounds with
enormous fuel potential. While the use of fungi is still a new idea, it could prove to be an
exciting and eco-friendly alternative to the current fuels we use today.
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