hi this is Kim this is a quick introduction to the fungi also pronounce fungi fungi fungi just a quick reminder that the archa and the bacteria are both procaryotes that means everybody else on this picture is a ukar ukar have membranous organel the DNA is protected in a nuclear envelope and the cell structure is just far more complex than the procaryotes remember that the procaryotes are single celled the protests are single- celled ukar fungi can also be unicellular but most are multicellular as we're going to see so the fungi are a very interesting group of organisms they include um the molds mushrooms truffles morals puff balls these horrible kitd fungi that are killing amphibians worldwide they're causing the extinction of amphibians had over 200 species of amphibian that we know about that have gone extinct due to these fungi it's a really terrible thing then we have the unicellular fungi the yeast so yeast are unicellular and you can see here they're kind of an oval shape yeast make a lot of amazing products for us and we'll talk about that in a few minutes what are the characteristics of fungi that make them different from all of the other groups um well first it's important to note that they're actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants okay this is a problem for us because when fungi cause diseases in humans it's very hard to kill them without interfering with our metabolism most of the drugs we use to kill pathogens are intended to just affect the pathogen without making the human sick that's very hard to do when it comes to treating a fungal infection fungi are heterotrofos okay so that means they have to eat their food they cannot make their own food through photosynthesis and most of them are decomposers the way they actually eat is they do it outside of their cells so they secrete enzymes that digest the food extracellularly in fact outside of the organism so that's why when mold mold grows on something in your refrigerator it actually gets soupy after a while so if you had some strawberries and a bowl and they got moldy and they started decomposing what's happening is that mold is secreting enzymes that are decomposing digesting breaking down those strawberries and then they will absorb those nutrients after the plant material is broken down or whatever it is they're feeding on fungi can reproduce asexually or sexually some can do both within the same organism so fungi have cell walls but the cell wall is made of something different than plant cell walls remember plant cell walls are made of cellulose which is a structural polysaccharide and when we talked about polysaccharides we talked about one additional polysaccharide called kiten and kiten is a structural polysaccharide but it has a nitrogenous group it has a nitrogen contain so it's a little bit different in structure and that's one of the characteristics of fungi is that they have cell walls that are made of kiten kiten is also what makes up the exoskeletons of arthropods so Crustaceans insects other arthropods have an exoskeleton meaning the skeletons on the outside of their body and that's made of kiten also but this kiten that makes up the cell wall of a fungus is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the fungi they can be unicellular multicellular or dimorphic meaning there are some fungi that can be unicellular at times and then multicellular at other times depending on environmental conditions they like to be in moist environments and they even like slightly acidic environments and they can grow with without light and wither without oxygen as you've probably seen when they grow in in a container that has a lid in your refrigerator um they interact with other organisms by forming some beneficial or mutualistic associations one good example of that are the micro risey on the roots of plants and I should have actually listed this when you get get to the section coming up on beneficial roles of fungi so I will just talk about it now there are some important fungi that are associated with the roots of certain plants and they take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it to a form that the plant can use that is an incredibly important beneficial association between fungi and plants also lyans which I'll show you a picture of in a minute you've probably all seen lyans before in fact you might have some growing in your yard um lyans grow on wood and other um structures in in the environment and they are an actual mutualistic association between algae and fungi so Lykan by itself isn't really an organism it's an association between two different organisms keni can also cause some serious um disease infection in humans and in plants and really fungi can infect or cause disease in a lot of different organisms funi reproduced by what are called spores and you can see the spores here on the mole these are spores ready to release and reproduce FNG are characterized by two structures um that really one is made of the other so hyy these are all hyy okay and then this whole structure that's made up of hyy is called a melium so here it says melium is the vegetative part of the fungus it's a mass of branching threadlike hyy you can see the hyy here in the mold you can see the hyy here in this mushroom fungi can be major pathogens in humans and other organisms like I mentioned a second ago a micosis is a diseased caused by fungi most fungal infections in humans are what are called opportunistic an opportunistic disease is it a disease that's occurring in someone who's immunocompromised or is already sick and now those pathogens are taking advantage of that so they wouldn't normally cause disease in a healthy person only in someone who's either sick or immuno compromised in some way someone who has cancer someone who has HIV fungal infections are a big deal in cancer and HIV patients and again they're very hard to treat or kill because all of the treatments that we use um it's hard to find one that doesn't somehow make you sick or interfere with your normal cell metabolism just going to come kind of go through a couple of quick ones um disorders that you're familiar with athletes foot is a fungal disease so if this is a mosis ringworm this is pretty common um in preschools it's very contagious kids touch each other and then they get this even though the word worm is here this is not caused by Fungus thrush this is a yeast infection in the mouth of course there are other types of yeast infection you can get on your skin fungus can cause major destruction in Plants I meant to move this slide to before the plants but valley fever valy fever is a fungal disorder that occurs in the lungs and if you breathe in this fungus it can make you really really sick you breathe in the spores they are actually in the soil and it can ENC occur in people or other animals and it's usually in a windy situation okay so wild and domesticated animals are susceptible and you can see all these different animals that are susceptible to Valley Fever um there is no cure and it can make people very sick 14,000 people in Arizona and California got valley fever in 2019 okay most people don't know that's what they have because it does require a specific lab test to diagnose it and most people just think they have the flu or something but they actually start coughing at blood they have really difficulty breathing weight loss a rash chest pain fatigue it's not past personto person okay so it's not contagious but if you are in you know out in the desert is kind of where that occurs the deserts of California and Arizona you can see the circle here symptoms arise about one to three weeks after exposure so there are other disorders caused by F fungi here there's fungal tuberculosis that is a problem so I didn't cover all of them I just mostly wanted you to get the idea that fungi can cause diseases in humans and they're very very hard to kill F though have some beneficial roles and this is a big one the invention of P penicillin as an antibiotic greatly increased human lifespan this was a big deal I mean people used to die of a tooth infection infection killed millions of people worldwide every year and this was the first effective um antibiotic that humans invented and it is actually the penicil ium fungus you can see penicilium here and you can see the spores so that's a huge beneficial role we make a lot of food products from fungus to me the best cheeses are The Moldy cheeses so here's the list here just some of the cheeses that are made um from fungi beer and wine any of the alcohols that are made using yeast so yeast is a fungus okay and this obviously all the bread products anything that you know pizza dough Donuts breads all those yummy yummy things that we rely on that are made by yeast uh and then soy products soy sauce miso tofu and then nutritional yeast that's in a lot of products today so funi makes some really good things for us and they didn't even put a really tast t y ones on here mushrooms [Music] morels um truffles not the chocolate truffles but the actual real truffles that are found in the ground by pigs and now dogs in France are actually trained to find truffles as well there are some important chemicals that are made using fungi so citric acid malic acid lactic acid these are all in food products that we eat some industrial enzymes such as lipase cellulase amas are made using fungi lipas is actually used in laundry detergent we can kill insects with fungus and these fungi are very insect species specific in some cases so we don't have to worry about them damaging the plants but instead you can infect the insect population and then you can kill those insects without having to poison our environment and poison our food supply which is pretty amazing okay this is just a picture of lyans and again that they're a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungus and they have all these different um shapes and forms and colors I just think they're beautiful I I love lyans I think they're a pretty cool Association of two organisms and of course as I mentioned before they are decomposers and in fact fungi are the only decomposers that can break down wood and cellulose in the forest so they are really the chief decomposers in the forest and that's very important because that is what Returns the nutrients to the soil we don't have an infinite supply of nutrients such as nitrogen phosphorous sulfur and for other plant life to grow and become part of the food chain so that that nitrogen phosphorous sulfur is passed on to other organisms such as us we need organisms to break down down that material so that's the funi I know that's a very short lecture about them but that's all I have to say about them today