Ustilaginales

Ustilaginales
Huitlacoche
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Fungi
Division:	Basidiomycota
Class:	Ustilaginomycetes
Subclass:	Ustilaginomycetidae
Order:	Ustilaginales (G. Winter 1880) [1] Bauer & Oberwinkler 1997 [2]
Families
Anthracoideaceae Clintamraceae Geminaginaceae Melanotaeniaceae Pericladiaceae Uleiellaceae Ustilaginaceae Websdaneaceae

The Ustilaginales are an order of fungi within the class Ustilaginomycetes. The order contained 8 families, 49 genera, and 851 species in 2008. ^[3]

In 2011, monotypic family Pericladiaceae Vánky holding just Pericladium Pass. (with 3 species) was added. ^[4] Also family Cintractiellaceae Vánky was later placed in a monotypic order Cintractiellales McTaggart & R.G. Shivas in 2020. ^[5]

Ustinaginales is also known and classified as the smut fungi. They are serious plant pathogens, with only the dikaryotic stage being obligately parasitic.

Morphology

Has a thick-walled resting spore (teliospore), known as the "brand" (burn) spore or chlamydospore.

Economic importance

They can infect corn plants ( Zea mays ) producing tumor-like galls that render the ears unsaleable. This corn smut , is also known as huitlacoche and sold canned for consumption in Latin America.

Sexual reproduction

Almost all Ustilaginales species share a dimorphic life cycle that includes an asexual, saprophitic yeast-like stage and a filamentous sexual stage that is required to parasitize a host. ^[6] The parasitic phase involves karyogamy, the process of fusing two haploid nuclei (present in haploid teliospore cells), followed by meiosis. ^[6] Each meiosis results in a septated basidium bearing four haploid basidiospores which can then proceed to yeast-like growth. During meiosis, genes are expressed that function in recombination and DNA repair. ^[6]

See also

• Huitlacoche

References

Notes

1. Winter G. (1880). Rabenhorsts Kryptogamen-Flora von Deutschland, Oesterreich und der Schweitz, Vol. 1 (in German). Leipzig: E. Kummer. p. 73. (as "Ustilagineae")
2. Bauer, R.; et al. (1997). "Ultrastructural markers and systematics in smut fungi and allied taxa". Canadian Journal of Botany. 75 (8): 1311. Bibcode:1997CaJB...75.1273B. doi:10.1139/b97-842.
3. Kirk MP, Cannon PF, Minter DW, Stalpers JA (2008). Dictionary of the Fungi (10th ed.). Wallingford: CABI. pp.  716–17. ISBN   978-0-85199-826-8.
4. Vánky, K. (2011). "The genus Pericladium (Ustilaginales). Pericladiaceae fam. nov". Mycologia Balcanica. 8 (2): 147–152.
5. McTaggart, A.R.; Prychid, C.J.; Bruhl, J.J.; Shivas, R.G. (2020). "The PhyloCode applied to Cintractiellales, a new order of smut fungi with unresolved phylogenetic relationships in the Ustilaginomycotina". Fungal Systematics and Evolution. 6: 55–64. doi:10.3114/fuse.2020.06.04. PMC   7451774 . PMID   32904025.
6. Steins L, Guerreiro MA, Duhamel M, Liu F, Wang QM, Boekhout T, Begerow D (June 2023). "Comparative genomics of smut fungi suggest the ability of meiosis and mating in asexual species of the genus Pseudozyma (Ustilaginales)". BMC Genomics. 24 (1): 321. doi: 10.1186/s12864-023-09387-1 . PMC   10262431 . PMID   37312063.

Bibliography

• Alexopolous, C.J.; Mims, Charles W.; Blackwell, M. (2004). Introductory Mycology (4th ed.). Wiley. ISBN   0-471-52229-5. OCLC   33012821.