Lauren Kalns's PLPA 631 Lab Notes: October 17 Lab

The goals for this lab were to:

Examen our Neurospora crosses
Look at various field collected materials

Neurospora crosses

Our Neurospora crosses have been very slow to develop beaked perithecia containing ascospores, but today it seemed like there was development for us to see the ascospores. First, we simply looked at the plates under the dissecting scopes to find perithecium that were mature enough, then we removed a perithecium from the crossing plate. None of the perithecium on my plate were mature enough, so thankfully Lorna had several mature perithecia and let me take one. To release the ascospores, you can take a dissecting needle to scoop it up and on to a slide, and then attempt to pierce the perithecium with the needle from the very top. You can also take two dissecting needles and use one to hold the perithecium down and use the other to poke it open. I instead used a cover slip to smash the perithecium and release the ascospores. Because many people in the lab did not have entirely mature perithecia, we waited to do the transfer of the ascospores. However, we did get to take our slides and look for fluoresce if we had a GFP strain. You can see very clearly the nuclei in the hyphae, and if you look closely you can also see four nuclei glowing faintly in the ascospores.

You can see here some ascospores on a squash mount of a perithecium.

Fluorescence microscopy of ascospores and hyphae.

We will work with these crosses again next week if they are finally mature enough.

Field collected materials

Also in lab today were various samples of field collected materials for us to observe.

Xylaria species on wood.

A group of unknown fungi.

Nidula species on wood, also called "Bird's Nest Fungi".

Cyathus olla, another "Bird's Nest Fungi".

Coriolus versicolor also known as "Turkey Tail".

Daedaleopsis confragosa

Phallus species also known as "Stinkhorn".

Ganoderma lucidum or the "Lingzhi Mushroom".

Laetiporus sulphureus the "Sulfur Shelf" or "Chicken of the woods".

Ganoderma tsugae or "Hemlock Varnish Shelf"

We were also presented with a Morel mushroom, but this can often be mistaken for other, often poisonous mushrooms. First is a picture of the real Morel, followed my some false Morels.