Diversity of life cycles, breeding systems, and mating types in mushrooms

What is it about?

Mushrooms develop fruiting bodies usually for the sake of sexual reproduction. This is controlled by different alleles of the mating type loci with genes encoding regulators for development. Mushrooms are formed by some ascomycetous fungi (such as Tuber and Morchella), with many more species within the Basidiomycetes, Agarocomycetes that give rise to mushrooms. The ascomycetes have a single mating type locus for genetic control, while the basidiomycetous fungi in most instances have two. Sometimes, a species may forn fruiting bodies without mating to anither strain. Such selfcomtable strains may undergo meiotic spore formation within the mushrooms, while in instances of monokaryotic fruitiung sometimes induced without any mating in best cases instead of sexual meiotic spores only mitotic spores appear

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