Genetic Analysis of the Life Cycle of Agaricus Bisporus

Chemical Analysis of the Lamella Walls of Agaricus bisporus Fruit Bodies

“…Commercial A. bisporus fruit bodies (strain H25), supplied by the Centro de Investigación, Experimentación y Servicios del Champiñón (CIES, Quintanar del Rey, Cuenca) and standarized at the button stage [13], were used. Fragments of these basidiocarps were cultivated in Raper medium [19] to obtain vegetative mycelium when necessary. Lamellae, also known as gills, were carefully separated from the caps of the fruit bodies and, after homogenization in a blender, were filtered through cotton cloth that retained the hyphae but allowed passage of basidiospores.…”

Strain improvement in the cultivated mushroom Agaricus bisporus

“…It has been shown that A . bisporus is secondarily homothallic (ELLIOTT, 1972 ;RAPER et al ., 1972) and probably has a single multiallelic factor for mating-type (MILLER & KANANEN, 1972 ; . However, GINNS (1974) reinterpreted the early data and suggested a two-factor control of compatibility .…”

“…However, recombinants were rare and she concluded that `it is doubtful whether this method will ever be of practical importance' . Hyphal fusions do occur when cultures are grown together but, in contrast to most higher basidiomycetes, fusion between compatible strains is not followed by a reciprocal migration of nuclei through the parental mycelia to establish a generalised hybridity (RAPER et al ., 1972) . Hybrid mycelium growing from fusion cells has therefore to compete with the parental mycelia which may be more vigorous, though FRITSCHE (1964) showed that such hybrid mycelia can sometimes compete successfully and become established .…”

“…However, if auxotrophic characters can be obtained, controlled genetic hybridisation presents few problems . Auxotrophic markers themselves have been shown to segregate and recombine (RAPER et al ., 1972), and the simply inherited sporophore characters, 'broad-stipe' and 'frilly-gill' have been manipulated using auxotrophy (MILLER et al ., 1976 ;ELLIOTT, 1979c) . The complex character cap colour has also been investigated after using auxotrophs to form initial heterokaryons (ELLIOTT, 1974 ;MILLER et al ., 1976) .…”

“…This was later disputed (e .g . SARAZIN, 1955) but the essentials of the life-cycle and breeding system remained obscure until the genetic studies of MILLER (1971), ELLIOTT (1972) and RAPER et al . (1972) .…”