(GIST OF SCIENCE REPORTER) NOBLE ROT PHENOMENON AND A FUNGAL CHROMOSOME MYSTERY

(AUGUST-2025)

Researchers from Sichuan University and the University of British Columbia have found that botrytis fungi cannot be cloned.

Definition and Function: ‘Noble rot’ is an esteemed name for the fungus Botrytis cinerea. It infects grapes, penetrating their skin and causing the berries to lose water through evaporation and shrivel up. This process leads to a concentration of sugars and flavours within the grapes.
Harvesting and Cost: Due to the selective infection of only a small percentage of grapes, the affected berries must be picked by hand, making the process labour- intensive and significantly increasing production costs.

General Biological Principle: In most animals, plants, and fungi, the nucleus of a cell typically contains one or more complete sets of all the organism’s chromosomes. This property is fundamental to processes like cloning, where a nucleus with all DNA instructions can be used to develop a new organism.
The Exception: Contrary to this established principle, Botrytis cinerea (noble rot) and another fungus, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, cannot be cloned.

A team of researchers from Sichuan University and the University of British Columbia made a discovery that challenges established chromosome biology: in these fungi, no single nucleus contains a complete set of chromosomes.
Instead, the chromosome set is distributed across two or more nuclei, and any one nucleus contains only a subset of the chromosomes.