Coprinopsis cinerea
Description
Coprinopsis cinerea is an edible mushroom, but must be used promptly after collecting.
This mushroom has a dark spores and it is an excellent model organism for the study of multicellular development in fungi as it is easy to grow in the laboratory and it completes its entire life cycle in 2 weeks.
The pileus (cap) changes size as it grows and matures from 2cm x 1.5cm closed, to 3.0cm open, and it changes shape from ellipsoid, expanding to convex and eventually plano-concave. At its center it is gray-brown, paler near the edge with a white/silvery veil. C. cinerea grows particularly well on dung and rotten vegetation and is commonly found all over the world.
The genome of C. cinerea strain okayama 7 was published in 2010. The genome is 36Mb in size on 13 chromosomes, with approximately 13,000 predicted protein-coding genes.
Other name: Gray Shag.
Coprinopsis cinerea Genome
This genome was sequenced by the Broad Institute.
The Coprinus cinereus sequence project is part of the Broad Institute's Fungal Genome Initiative. Its goal is to release a 10X genome sequence coverage for Coprinus cinereus, strain Okayama 7 (#130). The Coprinus genome project is a partnership between the Broad Institute and the Coprinus research community.
Genomic DNA for the genome project was provided by Patricia Pukkila at University of North Carolina. Broad produced whole genome shotgun sequence from 4kb & 10kb plasmids and 40kb Fosmids. The resulting 10X assembly was made public July 2003. This Whole Genome Shotgun project has been deposited at DDBJ/EMBL/GenBank under the project accession AACS00000000. The results of automated genome annotation will be made public in the Fall 2003 releases.
Coprinus cinereus is a multicellular basidiomycete with a typical mushroom form that undergoes a complete sexual cycle. Unlike most mushrooms, C. cinereus can complete its entire life cycle (2 weeks) in the laboratory. Its easy cultivation on simple defined media permits extensive genetic and molecular analysis. Spores of each mating type produce a monokaryotic mycelium. The fusion of compatible hyphae establishes a dikaryotic mycelium that forms a fruiting body - a miniature mushroom with three distinct tissues (gill, stalk, and cap).
The primordium grows and the basidial cells of the hymenial layers in the gills initiate and complete nuclear fusion, meiosis, and haploid basidiospore formation. Spore maturation and active discharge from the cap are accompanied by elongation of the stalk and autodigestion of the remaining gill tissue.
Photo sources:
Photo 1 - Author: Donkey shot (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo 2 - Author: James Lindsey (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Photo 3 - Author: James Lindsey (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Photo 4 - Author: Donkey shot (CC BY-SA 4.0)