Fungi 1

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Fungi 1

• Fungi Basics
• Yeasts are single-celled fungi, so they are
  microbes. So is mould.
• Fungi are usually bigger than bacteria.
• If there is just one of them, we call it a
  fungus.
• Fungi are more like animals than plants. For one
  thing, fungi cannot make their own food like
  plants do, but instead they eat other organisms,
  as animals do.

• With fungi, there are good guys and there are bad
  guys. Some make our food go mouldy, and some
  cause diseases. But they also break down dead
  plants and animals, keeping the world tidier.
• We use some fungi to do things for us, like make
  bread rise and brew beer.

These mushrooms are fungi, but theyre big and
theyve got loads of cells, so theyre not
microbes. Well ignore these for now.
Yeast cells
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Fungi 2

• How They Get Around
• Individual fungi dont move around.
• But they can spread by making tiny spores (a bit
  like seeds) that are carried by wind and rain and
  grow into new fungus cells when they land.
• Some fungi, such as moulds, make long threads of
  cells called hyphae. These threads are what make
  mould look fuzzy. Moulds can spread by growing
  and extending their hyphae.
• What They Look Like
• Fungi come in a variety of shapes and sizes and
  different types. They can range from single
  cells to enormous chains of cells that can
  stretch for miles.
• Yeast cells look round or oval under a
  microscope. They're bigger than bacteria, but
  still too small for your eyes to see them
  individually.

Draw and label this fungus cell
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Fungi 3

• Where Theyre Found
• Fungi usually grow best in places that are
  slightly acidic. Fungi live in the soil and on
  your body, in your house and on plants and
  animals, in freshwater and seawater.
• A single teaspoon of soil contains about 120,000
  fungus cells!

• If you ever get athletes foot (a skin complaint
  that gives you itchy feet), then youve got a
  fungus growing on you! (Dont worry, its not
  serious, and you can buy an ointment that kills
  the fungus.) The fungus likes moisture, so
  drying between your toes helps to keep it away.

Whoa! The mould on this bread is really out of
control!
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Fungi ExtrasRead at your own risk this may
shock you!
The Humongous Fungus (definitely not a microbe!)

• The only above-ground signs of the humongous
  fungus are patches of dead trees (which the
  fungus has killed by eating them), and the
  mushrooms (the fruits of the fungus) that form
  at the base of infected trees.
• It started out 2,400 years ago as a single spore
  invisible to the naked eye. It slowly grew to
  immense size by growing long threads of cells
  called hyphae, under the ground.

• Fungi range in size from the microbe we call
  yeast to the largest known living organism on
  Earth a 3.5-mile-wide fungus.
• Nicknamed the humongous fungus, this honey
  mushroom covers 2,200 acres in the state of
  Oregon, in the USA.

Threads called hyphae grow and spread underground