Crozier (mycology) Crozier (mycology) A crozier is an anatomical feature of many fungi in the phylum Ascomycota that form at the base of asci and look like hook-topped shepherd’s staffs or stylized religious crosiers. During the ascus initial formation the crozier helps to maintain a dikaryotic state in the ascus initial and its side branch that will continue the spreading growth of the ascogenous hyphae in Ascomycota fruitbodies. The tips of developing asci on these ascogenous hyphae curl over. One haploid nucleus migrates into the curved tip while the other compatible haploid nucleus remains in the penultimate space below the hook. The
Structural biology Structural biology Structural biology is a branch of molecular biology, biochemistry, and biophysics concerned with the molecular structure of biological macromolecules (especially proteins, made up of amino acids, and RNA or DNA, made up of nucleotides), how they acquire the structures they have, and how alterations in their structures affect their function. This subject is of great interest to biologists because macromolecules carry out most of the functions of cells, and it is only by coiling into specific three-dimensional shapes that they are able to perform these functions. This architecture, the "tertiary structure" of molecules, depends in a complicated way