NeurosporaCrassa

Neurospora: The Organism

Neurospora crassa is a fast-growing mold that requires very few nutrients to thrive. The recipe for Neurospora minimal media, which appears in the preceding entry, shows all of the necessary components. One of the main researchers of Neurospora is geneticist Rowland H. Davis. His book, Neurospora: Contributions of a Model Organism contains extensive information about this seemingly simple mold. A few more interesting selections are pasted below.

Davis, Rowland H. (2000). Neurospora: Contributions of a model organism. Oxford University: New York, NY.

“The several minimal media for N. crassa and other species…include a sugar (glucose or sucrose), a nitrogen source (both ammonium and nitrate salts…), phosphate, sulfate, potassium, magnesium, calcium, trace metals, and a small amount of the vitamin biotin” Page 16

“While Neurospora grows well in a minimal medium, it adapts to many other nutritional regimes. The organism grows well on a variety of mono- and disaccharides as carbon sources and can digest complex carbohydrates such as starch and cellulose” Page 17

“Glucose or sucrose is the most common carbon substrate for N. crassa…although it grows on a variety of other simple carbohydrates, such as mannose, fructose, xylose, galactose, ribose, and oligosaccharides” Page 87

“N. crassa has substantial activity for invertase, an extracellular glycoprotein that hydrolyzes sucrose outside the cell to fructose and glucose… It is required for growth on sucrose (the carbon source in most growth media), as demonstrated with invertaseless (inv) mutants… The enzyme appears rapidly in the walls of conidia upon germination and sustains growth on sucrose thereafter, though its specific activity becomes reduced as the mycelium grows… During conidial formation, the activities of invertase…increase substantially. While invertase is located in the wall fraction, much of it can be washed out, as though it were loosely held in the interstices of the wall polymers… The enzyme of conidia, like other extracellular enzymes, can be inactivated by brief treatment of cell walls with weak acid” page 97