Themes for mushroom exploitation in the 21st century: Sustainability, waste management, and conservation.

Because many natural resources are limited, sustainability becomes an important concept in maintaining the human population, health, and environment. Mushrooms are a group of saprotrophic fungi. Mushroom cultivation is a direct utilization of their ecological role in the bioconversion of solid wastes generated from industry and agriculture into edible biomass, which could also be regarded as a functional food or as a source of drugs and pharmaceuticals.

Cell differentiation in ascidian studied by nuclear transplantation.

The egg of the ascidian Ciona Intestinalis was divided 20 min after fertilization into two fragments, one nucleated and the other non-nucleated. Nucleus of ectodermal, mesodermal, or endodermal cell, taken from gastrula or tail-bud embryo was transplanted into the non-nucleated fragment. The fragment developed into abnormal or partial embryo, of which the cells or tissues were differentiated mainly according to the regional distribution of presumptive organ-forming substances of the egg cytoplasm that the fragment contained.