Inactivation of the Podospora anserina vegetative incompatibility locus het-c, whose product resembles a glycolipid transfer protein, drastically impairs ascospore production.

The het-c locus contains different alleles that elicit nonallelic vegetative incompatibility through specific interactions with alleles of the unlinked loci het-e and het-d. The het-c2 allele has been cloned. It encodes a 208-amino acid polypeptide that is similar to a glycolipid transfer protein purified from pig brain. Disruption of this gene drastically impairs ascospore production in homozygous crosses, and some mutants exhibit abnormal branching of apical hyphae. The protein encoded by het-c2 is essential in the biology of the fungus and may be involved in cell-wall biosynthesis.