Analysis of meiotic development in Coprinus cinereus.

The basidiomycete Coprinus cinereus offers many advantages for molecular analyses of meiosis. Fruiting body development is highly synchronous, and chromosome behaviour can be visualized using the light microscope. Furthermore, the small genome size (3.7 X 10(7) bp/haploid nucleus) facilitates molecular cloning procedures, and genetic characterization is reasonably advanced. To analyse controls of the meiotic process, we have isolated genomic sequences which are differentially expressed during Coprinus development by comparative cDNA hybridization to cloned genomic segments. We have concluded that fruiting body morphogenesis is associated with extensive changes in steady-state RNA levels in this fungus.