All right. So, uh this is going to finish up um chapter 13, excuse me. on um microorganism diversity. Sorry, I got something stuck in my throat. And so we discussed um uh bacteria and archa and prous and now we're going to talk about fungi. Uh so these are again ukareotes and so this lecture um on microorganis organisms we started to talk about the difference between proaryotes and ukarotes and we talked about the proarotes uh bacteria and archa uh and then we talked about proise which are ukareotes and remember I call them the kitchen junk drawer of of living things because it's this amalgamation of of organisms that don't entirely fit in the um animal plant or fungus kingdoms. And so they're they're their own kind of group. And each of these proise has some characteristics of animals or plants or uh fungi but not enough to be um taxonom taxonomically uh grouped in. So they're their own group the protoise. So now we're talking about fungi and they are ukareotes and they are heterotroes. So at its most basic level, recall that a heterotroof is something that must obtain energy from something else. Of course, energy is its food. Let me add that. Okay. Um, and it either has to eat something else as as animals do, uh, or it has to decompose something else, which is still this way of of breaking down nutrients into the elemental form. And so they are a heterotroof. And then of course the opposite of heterotroes. Quick tell me before I type it. Think of it. If you don't have to obtain your food from something else, you make your own food, which is an auto troof. Right. And autoroes can be things that photosynthesize like plants, like algae. But there's also um you know chemotroes for example. Sound familiar? If none of this sounds familiar then you need to study that part of the lecture again. Okay. And so uh they're ukareotic heterroes and they are decomposers. So it's not lion chases the gazelle kind of heterroe. Uh but they do have specific structures that allow them to decay um organic matter and then um kind of absorb those nutrients which is also a very important ecosystem service. They're uh a diverse group that we know of. There are over a thousand species um that we know of. you know that's always subject to change. And what they do is they break down the macroolecules into um very small very small molecules such that they can be absorbed by the structures of the fungus. So uh some are harmful or pathogenic, some are not. Uh penicellin is is a moles that's very helpful. Uh yeast is a fungus and it allows bread to rise. I like bread. You may or may not like bread. Um, but there's also Brad mold. There's a lot of uh uh fun funguses that influence spoilage. Um, athletes foot is a fungal disease of the skin. Super uncomfortable. Um, sometimes we eat the fungi. Kind of runs the gamut. Um right now uh one moment. But um sorry uh right now there's a Um, there's a problem with a multi-drug resistant fungus in the hospital setting called CRS. Um, this is a very very dangerous It's a very dangerous fungal infection. It has a very high mortality rate. Um, so it runs the gamut. Uh, not universally good or universally bad, which you could say about a lot of things. So, some basic characteristics and and I and I kind of want to point this out for you. This is um a pattern in the lectures and this is something you can use when you're studying when we're introducing um the content of the chapter. If you'll notice, there's always a few slides that talk about the broad generalizations. you know what what tends to be true for this organism or this topic. Um and so broadly fungi can be um either unisellular organisms or multisellular. So it could be just one tiny cell and and that's the fungus in and of itself or you know a whole entire mushroom like you see here which is clearly multisellular. They are heterotroofes. They are decomposers. They are not autoroes. They do not make their own food. They have to get it from something. And the structure that they use to kind of absorb and assimilate and help break down these nutrients is the hy. And um it's these sort of thread structures and they can actually take up a very large area. and really spread out. Now, think for a second, what else can you recall where we talked about increasing surface area? When else have we talked about increasing surface area? Where am I going to put that? Here. I'll put it right here. When did we talk about increasing surface area? Um, well, we talked about it when we talked about plant adaptations. In chapter 14, we talked about how the roots branch out to increase the surface area. And then we also talked in that chapter about a symbiosis that we see in association with plant roots. Do you remember what that was? We talked about the microisi which was a symbiosis between the plant roots and a fungus. Do you remember that picture from the lecture where you see the plant roots and then the cobwebby appearance of the fungus? That was that. Okay. Uh fun uh fungi are immobile. Uh even when they're unisellular, they're immobile and they actually have two modes of reproduction. Um asexual reproduction occurs through the mcelium and sexual reproduction occurs via spores. So if it's a multisellular fungus then there are structures uh both above and below ground uh that make up this organism. So the below ground structures um is the mycelium and you can see these these kind of thread out. Um, and then we have the body of the mushroom above ground. And the gills on the underside of the mushroom cap contain the spores. And both the mycelium and the body of the mushroom have these kind of veins of hyphay uh these fibers running throughout. So they have two modes of reproduction. For asexual reproduction, the main player there is going to be the spores. So the spores are the sex cells and they have a single set of chromosomes. We would call that hloid. So when we're speaking of chromosomes, there's um Whoops. Went ahead to Hang on. Uh there's hloid and diploid. Okay, just to give you some context, we as humans have diploid chromosomes. because we have um a set for mom and a set for dad. And so uh diploloyid chromosomes are going to um come into play with sexual reproduction which I'll talk about in the next slide in terms of fungus and hloid are going to come into play with as we said here asexual reproduction Asexual reproduction deployed deployed and as I've indicated in other lectures the whole point of sexual repro Production at its basic level is when two gametes fuse in fertilization to create an offspring. Offspring has chromosomes from each of the two individuals. That is sexual reproduction. So, uh, fungi can reproduce asexually through spores or sexually through the the hy. And if you recall, those are these um, let me go back to this one. Let me grab this. these structures here. We don't need that whole thing. So, it was both above. Let me move this over. Those fibers that run both below ground in the micelium and above ground in the body of the mushroom, right? This is a hi. Um so if if this fungi is reproducing sexually through the hy what happens is uh those hy link up and join and the hloid cells within them fuse to form diploid cells. That sounds familiar doesn't it? back to our core definition of what is sexual reproduction. And you know what? Let me add this while I'm thinking about it. Two hloid gametes fuse to create a diploid. All right. So in fungi the hloid cells within the hy of one and the hy of another fuse in fertilization and they create a diploid cell which in this case for fungi would be considered the diploid offspring. Now, as part of their life cycle, they do not continue to divide as diploid cells. They then go on to produce um hloid spores. But that is the sexual reproduction of a fungus. And all sexual reproduction regardless of the organism is this basic process here. two hloid gametes, one from, let me rephrase, two hloid gametes from two different individuals, right? One from each individual combine or fuse, which is fertilization. When they combine, that's what fertilization is. And now there's a fertilized cell which is the diploid offspring. Diploid means a set of chromosomes from each of the parenting individuals. Um, a lot of our plant pathogens are fungi. Um, tomato blight. There's a rusted blight for green beans. Um, a lot of the things that affect crops uh are fungi. Powdery mildew. If you get if you grow zucchini, if your squash vine bores don't get your zucchini, the the powdery mildew will. Um, a lot of fungal infections in animals are um cutaneous, so some kind of scrape or cut or exposure to fungus in the environment. the benefits of fungi. So they are decomposers. They are ukareotic heterotroes. And the reason they're able to do this is because they have specific enzymes that allow them to break down cellulose and lignen which are in the cell walls of plants. And so fungi have these enzymes that help break these materials down. We've already talked about the microisi and the benefits of that symbiosis. Can you recall what type of symbiosis we called it? There are types. There is commensalism. Commensism. There is parasitism. And there is mutualism. Which of these is microisi? Do you remember? Mutualism. Um, and they're delicious. They taste good. Um, we we eat them. We use them to ferment other things um which are also delicious depending and we use them for medicine. So a lot of uses there for fun.