Armillaria Mellea And Grifola Umbellata, Their Development And Symbiotic Relationship

Grifola umbellata is a traditional Chinese medicine , it is used for promoting diuresis to reduce edena. The polysaccharides extracted from sclerotia of G. umbellata is effective for inhibiting development of tumor . The injection of polysaccharides has obviously effective in the treatemnt of chronic hepatitis . We discovered that the growth of G. umbellata mainly depend on infection of Armillaria mellea . In this parer,the developmnet of A. mellea and G. umbellata and the symbiotic relation betweem the two fungi were studied systimaticaly by means of the techniques of electron microscope,modern enzymology and chromatography. The main results are as follows:1. The development of Armillaria melleaThe meristematic region was located at the apical center of rhizomorph of A. melleafrom which primary structure was derived . The primary structure included the young epiderm, cortex,and primary medulla which was composed of some large elliptic hyphae. Synchronous nuclear division usually took place in the primary medullary cells and formed cells with abundant unclei. Then the narrow hyphae will be generated with one or several nuclei by streching out of the wall of parent cells. Both thin wall and thick wall of narrow hyphae could be produced in one parent cell. The wall of parnet cells will break down to form a hollow center in mature rhizomorph,which was called medulla. Both of narrow hyphae distributed in it.The structure and development of septum in A. mellea were of typical dolipore septa. Hyphal septum was first developed by inside wall of hyphae in cross direction and left a small pore in the center,then the septal plate around the pore will be swelled. At this stage ,the septal pore apparatus was called as dolipore septum,and subseqent development of endoplas-mic reticulum formed the septal pore caps on each side of the pore .Organelles,such as mito-chondrium and Golgi body in hyphal cells, related to the development of septa.The fine structure in the fruit —body of A. mellea was studied with electron microscope. It consist of only generative hyphae,belonging to the monomitic constructure. Basidia are different from the hyphae bearing basidia in cytoplasmic contents. The vacuoles in basidia control both the development of little stalk and release of basidiospores.Determination of polysaccharide , armillarin, and melleolide indicates that in different stages of development of A. mellea the contents there are a great difference. Polysaccharide in mycelia and its fermenting liquor contains only glucose , sugar components in mycelia is 9.