FUNGUS DRAWS INTEREST OF SEMO BIOLOGY PROFESSORS

Susan Hancock, a senior in biology at Southeast, isolated specific fragments of DNA from the fungus to see how they were affected by ultraviolet light.

Professor Walt Lilly, above, talked to Professor Allen Gathman about the subcellular structures in a sample under the microscope.

Southeast Missouri State University biology professors Walt Lilly and Allen Gathman find fungus fun.

Each summer, they spend countless hours in their Rhodes Hall lab exploring the inner workings of the Schizophyllum commune, a whitish, bracket fungus that grows on decaying and dead wood.

"We call it Schizo," said Lilly, who has focused on the fungus since 1975 when he was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota.

"It really likes oak trees," said Lilly. An oak tree in his backyard is covered with the fungus.

The fungus is closely related to mushrooms, he said.

A fungus has cell walls like a plant, but it isn't a plant, he said. A fungus gets its nourishment from eating other organisms.

Lilly began teaching at Southeast in 1982. The university funded the research in the beginning.

He obtained a private grant in 1988. Since 1990, the research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

The project is funded through 1999. By then, some $660,000 in grant money will have been spent analyzing the fungus.

Much of the money goes to pay undergraduate and graduate students who work in the lab for 30 to 35 hours a week for 10 weeks during the summer.

With about a dozen students working on the project this summer, the lab is often crowded.

Operating expenses for the project total about $10,000 a year, which includes everything from test tubes to chemicals.

Lilly said the research project is unique. "We are the only people, as far as I know, in the world looking at the process of cell death and recycling of the nutrients in higher fungi," he said.

Gathman has been involved in the research project since 1992.

"We have learned a tremendous amount," said Gathman.

When starved for nitrogen, the older cells of the fungus break down and the nutrients are shipped to the cells on the edge of the colony, Gathman said.

Scientists like Gathman and Lilly want to know what triggers such cell action.

Lilly said the fungus has been the subject of genetic studies for decades.

It is a good subject for research. He said, "It grows really fast. We do experiments with colonies that are four days old. "It is so easy to manipulate. It is so easy to handle."

Dexter High School science teacher Trevor Copeland is working on the research project this summer.

"Cell biology is my main interest," said Copeland, who just completed his fourth year of teaching high school science.

Copeland said the research work makes him a better teacher. "I try to make it relevant to them," he said of teaching science to high school students.

Science is a "hands-on" learning experience, he said.

Copeland loves lab work, even in the warm environment of Rhodes Hall where the air-conditioning system struggles to keep the building cool.

"This is the fun part," he said of the research work. "I love learning."

Lilly said biology is a constantly changing field of study.

"There is essentially nothing I learned in undergraduate school that I teach now," he said.

Lilly said the research project is a learning experience for both students and faculty.

Both Lilly and Gathman view the project as first and foremost a teaching experience and an opportunity for students to do scientific research.

For them, there are plenty of lessons to be found in fungus.