MONOSACCHARIDE UTILISATION

General features of glucose utilisation in fungi other than yeasts

Almost invariably glucose is one of the sugars most readily utilised by nearly all fungi. This view is supported by the information in Table 5.1, albeit for a minute selection of fungi, although of widespread taxonomic distribution. However, the dominance of growth media based on glucose or glucan as the carbon source adds confidence to the view that glucose is a very important source of carbon and energy for growth. In all probability, almost every fungus metabolises glucose to pyruvate in a manner that is the same or extremely similar to that in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, i.e. by glycolysis or the pentose phosphate pathway/hexose monophosphate shunt. The evidence that fungi utilise glucose in such a manner has been well reviewed by Cochrane (1963), Gottlieb (1963), Blumenthal (1965, 1975) and McCullough et al. (1986). The evidence comes from a variety of approaches but it has to be stressed that it is only for a relatively few fungi that compelling evidence has been accumulated using a majority of the approaches. The effectiveness of any one approach is well discussed with respect to fungi by Blumenthal (1965), but the reader should also consult ap Rees (1974, 1980a, b) for a critique of the same methodology as applied to flowering-plant tissues, in particular with respect to assessing the extent to which the metabolic flux of glucose to pyruvate is via glycolysis or the pentose phosphate pathway.