Principles of Mushroom Developmental Biology
Research done over the last century has persistently indicated major diff erences between fungi, animals, and plants. Unfortunately, for most of that time fungi have been considered, quite errone- ously, to be closely related to plants; as observations have been constrained to comply with this funda- mental error, a proper appreciation of fungal developmental biology has been seriously inhibited. During the fi nal quarter of the 20t century, the phylogenetic status of the true fungi as an independent Kingdom of eukaryotes became clear. In this review, I bring together some of the observations, old and recent, that contribute to our current understanding of the way that fungi construct multicellular structures.