1. Fungi
Fungi
7th Grade Biology

2. What are Fungi?
Molds that grow on stale bread and mushrooms in your yard are types of fungi.
Most fungi share several important characteristics.
They are eukaryotes that have cell walls, are heterotrophs that feed by absorbing their food, and use spores to reproduce.
Fungi need moist warm places in which to grow.
They thrive on moist foods, damp tree bark, lawns coated with dew, damp forest floors, wet tile, and even your stinky damp feet.

4. How do they look?
What a fungus looks like depends on how its hyphae are arranged.
Fuzzy-looking molds that grow on old foods have loosely tangled hyphae.
In some they are packed tightly together.
The stalks and caps of mushrooms are examples of tightly packed hyphae.
Some are packed so tight they appear solid. Underground the mushroom has loose, threadlike hyphae.

6. Shelf fungus

7. Cell Structure
Fungi range from tiny yeasts to large multicellular fungi.
The largest known organism on Earth is actually an underground fungus that covers an area as large as a thousand football fields.
The cells of most fungi are arranged in structures called hyphae.
Hyphae are the branching, threadlike tubes that make up the bodies of multicellular fungi.
The hyphae of some fungi are continuous threads of cytoplasm that contain many nuclei.
Substances move quickly and freely through the hyphae.

8. Obtaining Food
Although fungi are heterotrophs they do not take in food like we do. They absorb food through hyphae that grow into the food source.
First the fungi grows hypae into the source of food.
Then digestive chemicals ooze from the hyphae into the food.
The chemicals break down the food. Then they are absorbed.
Some are parasites and break down food in living tissue, others feed on dead organisms.

9. Food and Fungi
When you eat a slice of bread, you benefit from the work of yeast.
Bakers add yeast to make it rise.
Yeast cells use the sugar in the dough for food and produce carbon dioxide gas as they feed.
The gas forms bubbles, which causes the dough to rise.
Yeast is used to make wine from grapes.
Molds are used to make some foods.
The blue streak in blue cheese. Are actually mold.
Mushrooms are also a good source of food.
Some are very poisonous!

11. Disease-Causing Fungi
Many fungi are parasites that cause serious diseases in plants.
The sac fungus that causes Dutch Elm disease is responsible for killing millions of elm trees in North America and Europe.
Corn smut and wheat rust are among plant diseases.

14. People Funk Some cause diseases in humans.
Athlete's foot fungus causes an itchy irritation in the damp places between toes.
Nail fungus causes white and yellow spots on the toe or finger nail. Gets under the nail and can cause damage. And its gross.
Jock itch.
Ringworm, another fungal disease, causes itchy, circular rash on the skin.
Some pneumonia is caused by fungus.
Because these diseases produce spores they can spread to person to person.