Genome expression during the life cycle of the fungus Schizophyllum commune

One concept in molecular biology about which there is general agreement is that cell differentiation in developing eukaryotes is based on differential programming of the cytoplasmic protein manu¬facturing machinery with mRNA templates coded by the nuclear DNA. The availability of these templates is thought to be determined by the combined effects of developmentally induced differences in mRNA transcription, processing and stability between different cell types. How cell type-specific genome decoding into steady state mRNA popula¬tions is controlled during eukaryotic development is, however, essen¬tially unknown. Without doubt this lack of knowledge is chiefly due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to identify regulatory genes which, qualitatively or quantitatively, govern the expression of genes during cell differentiation.