Phenotypes of fungi

Fungal phenotypes are classified in to three below mentioned classes.

• Colony morphology
• Drug resistance
• Nutritional requirement

Colony morphology

Fungus form colonies when nutrient supply is more. Some colonies can be differently colored, size and shape. Colony morphology is a way by which scientist can easily identify the growth of fungi.  It gives information on the fungi forms such as filament form, rhizoidal form, circular form or irregular form.  Fungal growth elevation types like convex, flat, raised, umbonate and or crateriform. Margin of growth can be entire, undulate, filiform, curled and or lobate. A fungus grown on Petri dish helps supplemented by a nutritional medium like agar in predicting shape of the colony and required surface for its growth. It gives clear understanding on opacity of fungal growth like its opaqueness, transparency and iridescent and translucent nature. A pigment produced by fungi produces different colours of colony. Most of the fungal growths are whitish grey in color with fuzzy edges.

For instance fungi like Aspergillus form white cloud of green colonies and spores are in ring shape. Fungi like Neurospora form pink colonies which are filamentous. Mutation of Neurospora results in colony morphology changes. For example ade gene presence cause red colonies of Neurospora.

Drug resistance

An opportunistic fungus threatens life. Many multi resistance drugs are developed to reduce the effect of fungi. For instance a fungus like Neurospora is more sensitive to antifungal drug like Sulfonamide. It is a sulfa drug. Some mutant forms of fungi require antifungal drug sulfonamide for its growth and survival. Nystatin is antifungal drug developed for yeasts and other mold infections including Candida.

Nutritional requirement

Phenotypes of fungi based on nutrition give insight into genetic variations in addition to biochemical pathway. Growth media will support the growth of fungi in Petri dish. Minimal media helps in growth of wild type of fungi like Neurospora. It supplies only limited nutrients to organisms. It consists of water, carbon source such as glucose or succinate for wild type fungal growth with essential elements like nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus and magnesia to allow the protein and nucleic acid production. Neurospora will not grow unless supplemental nutrient is added. This supplemental minimal media with single element like amino acid or sugar helps in growth of recombinant culture.