A. Describe conidiospores and sporangiospores. 1. Identify a mold that produces each of these spores. Molds reproduce primarily by means of asexual reproductive. Conidiospores (conidia) a unicellular or multicellular spore that is not enclosed in a sac. Penicillium and Aspergillus are examples of molds that produce conidiospores. Penicillium is a common household molds and a food contaminant. Sporangiospores are formed within a sporangium (sac). Sporangia are formed at the end of aerial hyphae called sporangiophores e.g. Rhizopus can cause wounds and respiratory infections in the host with a compromised immune system (Gladwin, & Trattler, 2011).
B. Describe a zygospore. 1. Identify a mold that produces zygospores. A thick-walled spore of fungi that is formed by union of two similar sexual cells, usually serves as a resting spore, and produces the sporophytic phase an example is rhizopus. It’s a black mold and grows on old bread and fruits.
C. Describe what type of growth you observed in each of your substrates (e.g., number of colonies, shape, color, and defining characteristics). I saw about three different types of fungi on the bread. There was a dark green and white while the cheese only had some green fungi and all the colonies were all attached to each other looking like a sponge. On the strawberry I noticed a whitish-greenish-grey growth also with the hyphae growing outwards. It was all around the strawberry and the colonies was about 3 growing towards each other. On the tomatoes I noticed very a lot of green-bluish and white colonies, I think there is grey also Its all over the tomatoes. The yogurt had a dark grey lump of growth on top of it. It looked like it was floating but it is not. The corn had a white and brown growth. It looked long and stretching down the corn (Gladwin, & Trattler, 2011).

D. Explain whether you saw the same or different types of microbes in each substrate.
Some of the fungi looked similar, the one that stood out greatly to me was the strawberry and tomatoes from all the others. The mold on the bread and cheese looked similar at the same time I noticed the differences also. The bread and fruits had a lot of dark mold on it probably zygospores.
E. Describe the type of morphological characteristics you observed in your wet-mount preparations. I observed the hyphae in the wet mounts, as well as the mycelium it looked mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. I could see this very clearly in the images.
F. Describe the type of morphological characteristics you observed in your stained preparations. The stained images showed to be more in flower like clusters. They were small, round, and opaque. The wet images seemed to be more detailed. In the stained images, I couldn’t see the hyphae or mycelium. I could only see the basic structure in the stained fungi images.
G. Discuss whether you were able to see different characteristics in the different preparations. Morphological differences between the two, however, are as follows. Rhizopus consists of a clusters of much branched absorptive hyphae growing downwards in the food medium, groups of hyphae growing upwards from the same node and bearing sporangia, swollen nodes and curved hyphae growing outwards over the surface of the substratum and bearing rhizoids and sporangiophores. The aspergillus looked brown and long (Gladwin, & Trattler, 2011).
H. Explain whether you were able to identify any of the fungal colonies you grew.
I noticed rhizopuz on the stale moist bread and rotten fruits and tomato. Rhizopuz is known as black mold. Rhizopus it looked like tight and compact. On the cheese and even the yogurt (bluish grey color) I think its penicillum or aspergillus because it looked like it had brush-like structures that looked grey and green. It’s hard to tell the difference.
1. Discuss what observations you based your identification on.
My observation was based on knowledge gained from the research and comparing it to my wet mount.
I. Explain how the replication mechanisms of fungi promote the spread of infection within an individual. Fungi rarely cause disease in healthy immunocompetent hosts. Disease results when fungi penetrate host barriers or when immunologic defects or other debilitating conditions exist that favor its entry and growth. Fungi then develops both virulence mechanisms of replication i.e. (e.g., capsule and ability to grow at 37oC) and morphologic forms (e.g., yeasts / hyphae) that facilitate their multiplication within the host. For example, the fungi that colonize skin, hairs, and nails have enzymes that digest keratin. Candida albicans exists in a unicellular yeast like morphology, but when it invades tissues it becomes filamentous; also, the systemic fungi histoplasmas are molds in nature and change to a unicellular morphology when they cause disease and growth promoting disease in the host (Gladwin, & Trattler, 2011).
References
Gladwin, M., & Trattler, B. (2011). Clinical Microbiology made ridiculously simple