Nuclear migration behavior of Coprinopsis cinerea, during the monokaryotic mating and the relationship between the clamp cell number and fruiting body formation

Abstract

Coprinopsis cinerea is a model mushroom used for studying the growth, development, fruiting body formation and genetic systems of the basidiomycetous mushrooms. This research aimed to study the nuclear migration behavior during the monokaryotic mating of 9 strains of C. cinerea namely PS001, PS002, PS001-1, PS002-1, 218, AT8, Uv-6031, MK54 and Okayama7. The results revealed that there are three patterns of nuclear migration, nuclear donor, nuclear recipient and both nuclear donor and recipient. The behavior of nuclear donor or recipient of each C. cinerea strain was varied depending upon the mating partners and the B mating type gene exerted clear effects on nuclear migration. During the monokaryotic mating, the positions of nuclei in the hypha were located and distinguished by staining with the fluorogenic dye 4¢,6-Diamidino-2-phenylindole dihydrochloride (DAPI) and the results showed that the nuclear positions within the hypha varied in each C. cinerea strain. Moreover, at least two types of hyphal fusion were observed, the hyphal tip fusion and lateral fusion. This study also found that the numbers of clamp cells was not correlated with the numbers of fruiting bodies. In addition, the dikaryons obtained from the monokaryotic matings resulted in the higher number of fruiting bodies than those of the homokaryon AmutBmut.