fungus

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by timojin, Jul 4, 2016.

  1. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    How much difference in biological process between grass and fungus
     
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  3. Edont Knoff Registered Senior Member

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    Much. The most notable is that grass uses photosynthesis to feed itself, and the fungus mostly relies on organic material that it can decompose.
     
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  5. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. Another is that the cell walls of fungi are made of chitin (the same stuff arthropod exoskeletons are made of), whereas those of plants are made of cellulose.

    I understand that fungi are genetically closer to animals than to plants.
     
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  7. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    In that way fungus evolved from vegetation , somehow the fungus does not require light for its life , They expand in the dark
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Fungi did not evolve from plants.
     
  9. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Fungi are not plants and, as spidergoat says, they did not evolve from them.

    They appear to have arisen around the time that animals and plants split from one another. See here for diagram: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree
     
  10. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    What I mean . # 1 energy comes from the sun , sun provide energy to synthesise cellulose from CO2 and H2O #2 Once we have we have sugar , sugar can be decomposed to give of energy for other form of life . At that point other form of life can arise , this what I meant it can be fungi,
    I don't understand you pretending believing in evolution and yet can not think for your self . please ASK DAWKIN your apostol.
     
  11. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    That last sentence is simultaneously offensive, stupid and mad. How do you manange it?
     
  12. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    You seem to be describing what biologists call autotrophs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotroph

    Organism that are dependent on other life in that way are called heterotrophs. Animals, fungi, most protozoa and many bacteria are heterotrophs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotroph

    Different forms of life can form at all points. There are different kinds of autotrophs. Biologists commonly differentiate between photoautotrophs that use sunlight and photosynthesis and chemautotrophs that use other chemical processes. Autotrophs are a diverse group including highly evolved flowering plants and cellularly (but not chemically) simpler bacteria.

    I don't understand that. Do you suggesting that fungi somehow create problems for evolution?
     
  13. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry pal I am Polish and suffer temporary insanity , I did mot mean to offend anybody even my Hib friend spidergoat , Is just that Spidergoat bombards me with evolution on me all the time
     
  14. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    No problem , I wanted to say all us depend on the sun . the sun passes energy to the plant fungus not necessary depend on the sun directly but get their energy from putrefaction of plants . So it occur to me , that the step between vegetation and animals could be fugi.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Too bad there is no research into this area of science. It could be interesting.
     
  16. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    If organisms seemingly intermediate between other types is what interests you, check out the slime molds.

    http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/slimemolds.html

    It isn't clear what these things are related to. They resemble protozoa in some ways. Many of them spend much of their time as single amoeba-like or flagellate cells. But thousands of them can merge together to form what effectively are huge single "cells" with thousands of nuclei. And just to complicate things, they form spores on fruiting bodies that look very much like the fruiting bodies that fungi produce.

    When I was a biology student, these were tentatively classified with the fungi on the basis of their reproductive structures, but apparently biologists have moved away from that classification in the last few decades. Now apparently it's believed that slime molds come in several different types that may not be closely related to each other and they seem to be classified with the Protista.

    I've always been fascinated by the slime molds.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2016
  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I think what is salutary is to look at the phylogenetic tree (link in my post 6). It is striking how many branches of life there are that are neither animals nor plants. We are all brought up with the idea that living things are one or the other and yet it is just not so. I suppose it is because these other types of life do not, as a rule, form large structures that we can observe to be alive with the naked eye. Slime moulds seem to be one of the exceptions to this generalisation.
     
  18. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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  20. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

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  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I was idly speculating last night about why slime molds, which spend most of their lives as single celled organisms, merge together periodically into what in effect are giant single cells with thousands of diploid nuclei, large enough to easily be visible to the eye. Presumably there are genetic differences between the nuclei and they aren't all identical clones of each other.

    The speculation was that perhaps the nuclei come together periodically and share the same cytoplasm so as to be better able to share genes and genetic information amongst their population. But this physically cumbersome method is only effective for simple microscopic organisms and ended up superceded by sexual reproduction in an almost infinite variety of permutations in larger multicellular organisms, and by one-on-one cell conjugation (as seen in bacteria) in the other direction, and all we are left with today is these few examples of a largely abortive evolutionary experiment from long ago.
     
  23. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    Could not be that slime is an aggregation single cell organism as a classic example VOLVOX ?
     

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