Chytridiomycota are a division of zoosporic organisms in the kingdomFungi, informally known as chytrids. The name is derived from the Ancient Greekχυτρίδιον (khutrídion), meaning "little pot", describing the structure containing unreleased zoospores. Chytrids are one of the earliest diverging fungal lineages, and their membership in kingdom Fungi is demonstrated with chitincell walls, a posterior whiplash flagellum, absorptive nutrition, use of glycogen as an energy storage compound, and synthesis of lysine by the α-amino adipic acid (AAA) pathway.
Rozella is a fungalgenus of obligate endoparasites of a variety of hosts, including Oomycota, Chytridiomycota, and Blastocladiomycota. Rozella was circumscribed by French mycologist Marie Maxime Cornu in 1872. Considered one of the earliest diverging lineages of fungi, the widespread genus contains 27 species, with the most well studied being Rozella allomycis. Rozella is a member of a large clade of fungi referred to as the Cryptomycota/Rozellomycota. While some can be maintained in dual culture with the host, most have not been cultured, but they have been detected, using molecular techniques, in soil samples, and in freshwater and marine ecosystems. Zoospores have been observed, along with cysts, and the cells of some species are attached to diatoms.
The purpose of a formal name is to have a single name that is accepted and used worldwide for a particular plant or plant group. For example, the botanical name Bellis perennis denotes a plant species which is native to most of the countries of Europe and the Middle East, where it has accumulated various names in many languages. Later, the plant was introduced worldwide, bringing it into contact with more languages. English names for this plant species include: daisy, English daisy, and lawn daisy. The cultivar Bellis perennis 'Aucubifolia' is a golden-variegated horticultural selection of this species.
An anaerobic organism or anaerobe is any organism that does not require molecular oxygen for its growth. It may react negatively or even die in the presence of free oxygen. Anaerobic organisms do not use oxygen as a terminal electron acceptor in their respiration process to produce energy, but a less powerful oxidizing agent, such as nitrate, ferric ion, Mn(IV), sulfate or bicarbonate anions. In contrast, an aerobic organism (aerobe) is an organism that requires a sufficiently oxygenated environment to respire, produce its energy, and thrive. Because the anaerobic energy production was the first mechanism to be used by living microorganisms in their evolution and is much less efficient than the aerobic pathway, anaerobes are practically, de facto, always unicellular organisms (e.g. bacteria and archaea (prokaryotes), or protozoans (eukaryotes). However, a minuscule multicellular organism, with an exceptionally rare metabolism and surviving in a hypersaline brine pool in the darkness of the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, has been recently discovered. Meanwhile, it remains a scientific curiosity, as the much higher energy requirements of most multicellular organisms cannot be met by anaerobic respiration. Most fungi (eukaryotes) are obligate aerobes, requiring oxygen to survive and grow; however, some species, such as the Chytridiomycota that reside in the rumen of cattle, are obligate anaerobes; for these species, anaerobic respiration is used because oxygen would disrupt their metabolism or kill them. The deep seafloor and its underlying unconsolidatedsediments ranks among the largest potential habitats for anaerobic microorganisms on Earth. Moreover, chemoautotroph microbes also thrive around hydrothermal vents, discharging hot water on the oceanseabed near mid-ocean ridges, where anaerobic conditions prevail. These microbes produce energy in the absence of sunlight or oxygen through a process called anaerobic respiration, whereby inorganic compounds and ions such as protons (H), elemental sulfur and its derivatives (SO2−4, S2O2−3), or ferric ions, are reduced to drive oxidative phosphorylation.
Rozella (Cryptomycota) is the earliest diverging fungal genus in which chitin has been observed at least in some stages of their life cycle, although the chitinous cell wall (another fungal hallmark) and osmotrophy originated in a common ancestor of Blastocladiomycota and Chytridiomycota, which still contain some ancestral characteristics such as the flagellum in zoosporic stage. The groups of fungi with the characteristic hyphal growth, Zoopagomycota, Mucoromycotina and Dikarya, originated from a common ancestor ~700 Mya. Zoopagomycota are mostly pathogens of animals or other fungi, Mucoromycotina is a more diverse group including parasites, saprotrophs or ectomycorrhizal. Dikarya is the group embracing Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, which comprise ~98% of the described fungal species. Because of this rich diversity, Dikarya includes highly morphologically distinct groups, from hyphae or unicellular yeasts (such as the model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae) to the complex multicellular fungi popularly known as mushrooms. Contrary to animals and land plants with complex multicellularity, the inferred phylogenetic relationships indicate that fungi acquired and lost multicellularity multiple times along Ascomycota and Basidiomycota evolution.
Chytridiomycota in the context of Entomopathogenic fungus
Entomopathogenic fungi are parasitic unicellular or multicellular microorganisms belonging to the kingdom of Fungi, that can infect and seriously disable or kill insects.
Pathogenicity for insects is widely distributed in the kingdom of fungi and occur in six fungal phyla (Ascomycota, Oomycetes, Basidiomycota, Chytridiomycota, Zygomycota, and Microsporidia). It plays a vital ecological role in controlling insect populations by impacting 19 out of 30 known insect orders. Some fungal entomopathogens are opportunistic whereas some have evolved into highly specific pathogens of insects.
Chytridiomycota in the context of Joyce E. Longcore
Joyce E. Longcore is a mycologist and an associate research professor at the University of Maine. She is most well known for first culturing and describing Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis which is a species of Chytridiomycota fungi that was the first to be known to attack vertebrates. She continues to collect and isolate Chytridiomycota cultures for other researches to use for their own studies.