ECOCYCLES Open access scientific journal ISSN 2416-2140 of the European Ecocycles Society Ecocycles, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 46-57 (2018) DOI: 10.19040/ecocycles.v4i2.105 ORIGINAL ARTICLE How mushrooms tend to break through the genetic dead end Gábor Zs Gyulai1, Renee P Malone2, Mihály Czakó3, Lilja Murenetz4, and Gábor Gyulai5 1Institute of English and American Studies, Eszterházy Károly University, 3300 Eger, Hungary 2School of Food Science and Environmental Health, DIT, College of Science, Cathal Brugha St, Dublin 1 3Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, 700 Sumter St., Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A. 4Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, 6 Science Avenue, 142290 Pushchino, Moscow region, Russia 5Institute of PhD Schools, St. István University, 2100 Gödöllő, Hungary E-mail addresses:
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[email protected] Abstract – Genes, genetics, genomics, and the roles of mushrooms and toadstools in the global carbon cycle (GCC) are reviewed here. The literature survey is a tribute to the contributions made by Hungary and Hungarian scientists to fungi and mushroom research. For this reason, the names of the fungi discussed are also given in Hungarian. Fungi – like wood eating insects – are the main decomposers (a type of consumers, syn.: heterotrophs) and consequently recycle the biomass produced by photosynthetic organisms (i.e., the producers, syn.: autotrophs). Photosynthesis is driven by the solar energy day by day (by photo-autotrophs) (i.e., primary producers of chlorophyllous plants), and primary production night by night is performed by chemo-autotroph prokaryotes.