What is the structure of mucor?
Mukor is a genus of molds in the zygomycete class. The mucor fungus develops in the soil, on food, organic residues of plant origin, which leads to mold growth of root crops, fruits, feed if stored improperly. At first, a fluffy coating of white is visible with the naked eye, which darkens over time. This is due to the formation of many sporangia with spores for asexual reproduction. If the mucor mushroom is cultivated on agar nutrient medium, then round-shaped colonies are formed. Mucor hyphae are not segmented and strongly branched. The spores of the fungus are concentrated in sporangia, which are spherical in shape. Sporangia are found on elongated hyphae (sporangiophores) growing vertically upward. Even at low magnification, the sporangia can be clearly seen under the microscope. Those parts of the mycelium, where clusters of sporangiophores are located, look like many pins. In this regard, mushrooms of the genus mucor are called capitate molds.
Mucor mycelium is not divided by septa and is one huge multinucleated branched cell. Otherwise, the internal structure of hyphae is typical of eukaryotes. Mucor hyphae, which have a somewhat curved shape, are called stolons. The edges of the stolons are framed by bundles of shortened hyphae, which resembles a root system. The filaments of the fungus mycelium are thin and transparent, so at first the mold looks like a white fluff before sporangia form. After the maturation of the spores, the shell of the sporangium, consisting of callose, bursts at high humidity, and several thousand multinucleated immobile sporangiospores disintegrate. They are very small, so they can only be seen with a microscope. Sporangiospores, which appeared after the reduction of nuclear fission, are the precursors of a new generation of fungi.
There is a way of sexual reproduction in mucor. In this case, two filaments of one (in homothallic species) or different (in heterothallic species) mycelium are connected to form a diploid zygote. A short sprout hypha with an embryonic sporangium grows from it, giving rise to a new fungus.
