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Polarizing processes for germ tube outgrowth from monilioid fungal spores (Neurospora conidial model)

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Proceedings / Indian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Pregerminative polarization of the cytoplasmic content of a spore following its awakening by water imbibition is ultrastructurally featured by a 2-step sequential process: (i) general partition into a vacuole-enriched pole endowed with increased turgor pressure opposite to an energized pole of clustered mitochondria; such mitochondrial positioning would predetermine the bulging site of the germ tube by optimizing the chance event of (ii) physical contact between that plasma membrane site with the membrane of a few of the most peripherically located mitochondria of the cluster. In such a membrane interaction, the plasma membrane would presumably be electrically depolarized by mitochondrial protons vectorially extruded towards its negatively charged inside face acting as proton sink. That primary spatio-physical event would set off a train of events, the first being a local acidification of the thereby gelified cytosol excluding mitochondria while attracting vesicles into this prospective hyphal tip.

It is further suggested that the primary axiation of the germinative conidium can be controlled by slight changes in the peripheral O2 tension guiding the mitochondrial cluster towards the elected membrane site of germ tube outgrowth.

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  1. Laboratoire de Microbiologie générale, Université de Genève, 1211, Genève 4, Switzerland

    Gilbert Turian

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  1. Gilbert Turian
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Turian, G. Polarizing processes for germ tube outgrowth from monilioid fungal spores (Neurospora conidial model). Proc. Indian Acad. Sci. 94, 165–173 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03053135

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