What are fireflies can also master some fungi: you Shine in a self-produced light. Regardless of the various animals, and microorganisms, fungi from the group of mushrooms have-like developed the ability to bioluminescence, and about 160 million years ago. The scientists have found to Huei-Mien Ke from the Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica in Taipei in molecular genetic studies.
As a light-producing substance luminous mushrooms 3-hydroxy hispidin use: With an enzyme called Luciferase oxidizes, breaks down this substance and releases a light quantum. How the same molecular machinery testifies, is the bioluminescence created with the mushrooms just a single Time. But why luminous species are so rare and in the family tree so far scattered? To investigate this, researchers from Taiwan, together with Chan-Yi Ivy Lin of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and László G. Nagy of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest for the bioluminescence responsible Gene Cluster under the magnifying glass. Probably, the biologists writing in the “Proceedings” of the American National Academy of Sciences, has developed the light-emitting ability, once a part of the fungal genome, which did not contain any vital information. There DNA had pretty much with impunity, remodel, wherein the glow of the necessary genes were also frequently lost.
bioluminescence occurs not only in light of mushrooms, blooming algae can lights. : Image: dpa
very often happened that in the genus of Helmlinge: Of the roughly six hundred species, only about twelve percent have the ability to bioluminescence. In comparative studies of five helmling species encountered Huei-Mien Ke and colleagues, to the complete loss of bioluminescence responsible Gene cluster: in the Daytime, the species called Mycena indigotica not presented in bright Blue, but lit in the dark. The remaining four helmling species produce a bright green light on the Basis of different composite bioluminescence Cluster. Once one of the genes has changed its direction, another time, has doubled a Gene, and a third species, the even happened twice.
Far more conservative Halli come in mesh, therefore, because you bioluminescence-Cluster is moved in a stable Region of the genome. Apart from the duplication of a gene at the Northern honey fungus (Armillaria borealis) have not changed in the eight studied species of the Cluster. Your ability to bioluminescence, however, is restricted to the mycelium referred to Fungal hyphae that grow usually in Secret. The fruit body, the sprout often in dense clusters from the infected wood, not lights. You can do the same, for example, the radish-Helmling (Mycena pura) observe, a fungus that is a strong radish smells, and in this country in many forests, often. In the case of others, especially the Southeast Asian helmet Lingen lamps are not only the Fungal hyphae, but also the fruit of the body.
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