Moore D., Wai Chiu S., Halit Umar M., Sánchez C.
Summary Senescence and death of mushroom fruit bodies are the natural terminations of their development but not the end of their life because a new batch of fruit bodies can arise directly from the old. A fungal version of programmed cell death seems to be involved in sculpturing fruit body shapes. Fungal differentiation appears to be quite flexible and greatly influenced by the immediate microenvironment. Techniques are now emerging which will enable the earliest stages in fruit body initiation to be studied.