Tagged: yeast

There are two major fungal growth modes: yeast and hyphae.  Yeast are single-celled organisms.  Hyphae are multicellular,*branching tubes that form mycelial networks.  Although “yeast” is commonly used to refer to Saccharomyces cerevisiae, yeast are a very diverse group.  Actually, they are not even a single group: yeast are placed into both Ascomycota and Basidiomycota.  These are the same two phyla that contain mushrooms, which exhibit hyphal growth.  Yeast grow by increasing the volume of the cell and then dividing through mitosis.  This mitosis can follow either a fission or budding pattern.  In fission, the cell divides in half and the cytoplasm is split equally.  In budding, a small bud forms off of the cell.  The nuclei replicate and half of them move into the bud.  The bud grows in size and eventually separates.  At this point the bud is still smaller and the cytoplasm is not divided evenly.  Under certain...