Chitridiomycetes

Chytridiomycetes ( lat. Chytridiomycota ) - department of the kingdom of mushrooms ( Fungi ). It unites more than 120 genera and about 1000 species. Mycelium is poorly developed, the bulk of the thallus is the so-called. plasmodium from which rhizoid hyphae grow. The most primitive representatives have absolutely no mycelium, and their body in the vegetative state is represented by a single cell, sometimes deprived of a rigid cell wall . The base of the cell wall is chitin-gluconic, as in higher fungi .

Representatives of the department are closely related to the aquatic environment (marine and freshwater), where they parasitize on algae and invertebrates . May cause massive death of aquatic organisms up to amphibians . They can develop in moist soils and cause diseases of higher plants: black leg of cabbage ( Olpidium brassicae ), potato cancer ( Synchytrium endobioticum ), etc., however, are not as dangerous as oomycetes . A smaller number of representatives are saprotrophs on substrates containing chitin , cellulose and keratin .

The haploid zoospores of chitridiomycetes are equipped with one flagellum , always moving backward when moving, and can either directly give rise to a new haploid organism, or merge with each other and even then create a diploid organism, forming new haploid zoospores ( Chytridiales order). In some species, there is a sexual process according to the type of hologamia (fusion of whole organisms) or gametes other than zoospores are formed. Mostly representatives of the haplont department, but there is also a change in nuclear phases.

Since flagella zoospores are present in the life cycle of chitridiomycetes, in the late 1980s and 1990s, many researchers excluded them from the mushroom kingdom and assigned them to mushroom-like chromists . Around the same time (1991–1996), data appeared on the ultrastructure of mitochondria , the chemical composition of cell walls and molecular phylogenetic analyzes of these organisms, which showed that they should still be classified as true fungi.

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