Masters of Decay: Wood Rotting Fungi (IMAGE)

SMBE Journals (Molecular Biology and Evolution and Genome Biology and Evolution)

Masters of Decay: Wood Rotting Fungi

Caption

Fungi are master decayers of dead plant matter, including wood. So-called white rot fungi have the special ability to decompose the tough, recalcitrant plant polymer lignin, using enzymes that turn solid wood into a stringy, bleached pulp. Depicted is a mushroom, Pholiota lucifera, a white rot species that specializes on dead branches of softwoods.

Credit

Professor Laszlo Nagy, Synthetic and Systems Biology Unit, Institute of Biochemistry, BRC-HAS, Szeged 6726, Hungary

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