ULTRASTRUCTURE OF APICAL REGION OF FUNGAL HYPHAE

All apical regions of vegetative hyphae of 24 fungal species of different systematical origin are possessing an apical body the appearance of which may be caplike or spheroidal. Ultrastructurally the apical body represents an area of ground cytoplasm of different size and shape, containing apical vesicles, microvesicles and ribosomes. The vesicles-membrane has an uncontrasted middle-layer of the same thickness (41,5 å) as the plasmalemma and is significantly different from that of the ER (28,1 å). True Golgi-dictyosomes are lacking. Morphologically characterized single cisternae, appearing in graded density in the whole hyphal cytoplasm seem to take over secretory function of the Golgi-apparatus. They produce Apex vesicles peripherically in which probably are transported exoenzymes apically and are extruded at the apex. Accumulation of the vesicular components of the apical body is destroyed as stopping of growth is induced. No structural changes of single vesicles occur. Translocation of the whole vesicles-aggregation takes place if the apex is bent. A model is constructed, based on reconstruction of serial sections and corrected due to results of the whole investigations. © 1969 Springer-Verlag.