Molecular alteration in a Neurospora crassa morphological mutant and its phenocopy.

A procedure using ion exchange chromatography has been developed to detect alterations in a polysaccharide produced by Neurospora crassa. The polysaccharide, isolated from medium that has supported the growth of a culture, is highly responsive to the 3-methyl-2-benzothiazolinone hydrazone assay, indicating a high hexosamine content. The substance elaborated by wild-type N. crassa can be fractionated into two components that appear by rechromatography to be closely related. When isolated from mutants of the peak (pk) locus, the corresponding polysaccharide cannot be resolved into two components. Instead, a single component is consistently found. This variant chromatographic pattern cosegregates with morphological effects of the pk allele after crosses with the wild type. The polysaccharide isolated from a wild-type culture that has been induced by sorbose to phenocopy the hyphal characteristics of pk mutants elutes from the ion exchange column in a manner similar to the corresponding polysaccharide from the pk mutants.