Figure 5.

Sexual reproduction in imeBΔ, ndtAΔ and xprGΔ mutants. (A) Formation of sexual fruiting bodies (cleistothecia). Mature cleistothecia, which are shiny opaque black spheres, are visible in the pictures in the top row. Each picture shows a 2 mm × 2 mm section of a colony. A white scale bar (200 µm) is shown in the WT picture. The white circles on the clear spherical structures in the second row of pictures are a reflection of the stereomicroscope lights. (B) Levels of the ppgA transcript, which encodes a putative sex pheromone, relative to actA mRNA levels. The results are the average for a minimum of three independent RNA preparations, each of which was assayed in duplicate. Transcript levels and standard errors, relative to the levels in the WT control during carbon starvation, are shown. The data were analyzed using ANOVA after log_e transformation. The values marked with an asterisk are outside the 95% confidence intervals for the WT strain. The full genotypes of the WT (MH2), imeBΔ (MK598), ndtAΔ (MK481), xprGΔ (MK422), imeBΔ ndtAΔ (MK647), imeBΔ xprGΔ (MK601), xprGΔ ndtAΔ (MK505), and imeBΔ xprGΔ ndtAΔ (MK649) strains are given in Table 1.