Kingdom Fungi, definition. Origin and evolution of Fungi.
Biology and Ecology: the fungal cell. Differences with respect plant cell wall, reserve substances, specific organelles, septa. Differentiation, structure and growth. Spore. Sporogenesis and dispersion. Tropisms, environmental conditions for growth. Main metabolic pathways, primary and secondary metabolites. Reproduction and life cycles. Anamorphs and teleomorphs. Heterokaryosis and parasexuality.
Ecology: symbionts, parasites and saprotrophs. Successions.
Systematics: phenetic and cladistic approaches. Apomorph and plesiomorph characters, concepts of homology, analogy and homoplasy; methods in phylogeny (morphological approaches, palaeontological, biochemical and molecular genetic); phylogenetic trees organization; nodes, internodes OTU, clades and grades; monophyly, Polyphyly and paraphily. The outgroup concept.
Molecular phylogeny: RFLP techniques (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism), RADP (Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA) and AFLP (Amplified Fragments Length Polymorphism). Sequencing: characteristics of molecular markers. The ribosomal genes. Alignment. Phylogenetic inference from molecular sequences: distance methods and discrete methods. Bootstrapping.
Phylogeny and characteristics of phyla and subphyla the Kingdom Fungi.
LABORATORY:
Recognition of a selection of representative fungi of various systematic groups.
Techniques of molecular phylogeny. Extracting DNA from selected fungal strains; amplification of ribosomal gene portions. Agarose gel electrophoresis. Sequencing, proofreading of the sequences with dedicated programs. Comparison of the sequences obtained with those stored in network databases (NCBI). Alignment. trees built with the use of various algorithms (Neigbour Joining, Maximum likelyhood).

Gams W. et al., 2001. CBS Course of Mycology. Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
CBS Laboratory Manual for Fungal Biodiversity. CBS Fungal Biodiversity Centre 2009.
Deacon J. W. 2000. Micologia moderna. Calderini ed agricole.
Deacon J. W. 2005. Fungal Biology. 4th edition Blackwell.
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