The Five Characteristics of Fungi
1. The cells of fungi contain nuclei with chromosomes (like plants and animals, but unlike bacteria).
2. Fungi can not photosynthesize , this is because they are heterotrophic, which means that it is an organism that cannot create its own food and is dependent on complex organic substances for nutrition.
3. Fungi absorb their own food.
4. They mostly develop very diffuse bodies made up of a spreading network of very narrow, tubular, branching filaments called hyphae. These filaments exude enzymes, and absorb food, at their growing tips. Although these filaments are very narrow, they are collectively very long, and can explore and exploit food substrates very efficiently.
5. They usually reproduce by means of spores, which develop on, and are released by, a range of unique structures (such as mushrooms, cup fungi, and many other kinds of microscopically small fruiting bodies).

http://www.microbeworld.org/microbes/fungi/ 

The Role Fungi Plays in Nature
 
Fungi help the environment by eating bad or harmful bacteria and by protecting the good or harmless bacteria. Fungi are heterotrohic organisms with thick chitin wall. Fungi finds a place in fermentation technology, antibiotic production, production of enzymes used in genetic engineering and other processes, bioactive production etc. Apart from these beneficial uses the fungi also produces many diseases and cause both animal and plant loss.

 

 

VOCABULARY

Fun·gi  

a taxonomic kingdom, or in some classification schemes a division of the kingdom Plantae, comprising all the fungus groups and sometimes also the slime molds.

Also called Mycota.

hy·pha  
Any of the threadlike filaments forming the mycelium of a fungus.

fruiting body

an organ specialized for producing spores 

 

Budding

1. 

reproduction of some unicellular organisms (such as yeasts) by growth and specialization followed by the separation by constriction of a part of the parent 

li·chen  

1.

any complex organism of the group Lichenes, composed of a fungus in symbiotic union with an alga and having a greenish, gray, yellow, brown, or blackish thallus that grows in leaflike, crustlike, or branching forms on rocks, trees, etc.

http://dictionary.reference.com/

 

 
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