Mycology is the branch of Botany which deals with the study of fungi.
General characters
Mycology is the study of mushrooms. At present biologists use the term Fungus to include eukaryotic spore bearing achlorophyllus organisms that generally reproduce sexually and asexually and whose usually filamentous branched somatic structures are typically surrounded by cell wall containing chitin or cellulose or both of these substances together with many other complex organic molecules.
Fungi
Fungi play an important role in industry, specifically fungi are the agents responsible for much of the disintegration of organic matter and as such they affect us directly by destroying food, fabrics, leather and other consumers goods manufactured from promaterial subject to fungal attack. They cause the plant diseases and many disease of man and animals. Fungi are the basis of a number of industrial processes, involving fermentation such as bread making, wine and beer making, in the preparation of certain cheese. They are employed in the commercial production of many organic acids, of some drugs such as ergomatrine and cortisone and some vitamin preparation. Some of them are responsible for the manufacture of a number of antibiotics such as penicillin, Griseofulbin. Some fungi, for example: Neurospora is used as a research material in Genetics.
Fungi obtain their food either from dead tissues or from the living body of plants and animals. Thus they lead a heterotropic mode of life either as saprophytic or as parasitic. The non-living thing on which the fungus feed itself is known as Substratum. The living body on which parasites thrive is known as hosts. In fungi carbohydrate food is stored in the form of Glycogen.
Saprophytic fungi grow in a variety of situations and thrive under conditions of moisture, warmth and supply of organic food. Fungi exhibit different degree of parasitism. There are some fungi which can never be grown on artificial food, their living acitivities strictly confined on living host. These are obligate Parasites. There are facultative saprophytes (Ustilago) which are normally parasites but given the opportunity they can behave as saprophytes. Likewise there are obligate saprophytes (eg: saprolegnia monoca) and facultative parasites (Pestalotra) that usually grow as saprophytes but under certain conditions become parasitic.
Fungi secrete enzymes both inside as well as outside their cells which are referred to as intercellular and intracellular enzymes respectively. In many parasitic species the fungal hyphae form haustoria inside the host cells whose tips secrete enzymes to convert the host food materials into a soluble form and thereafter absorbs them through osmosis.
