Stipe (mycology) puffballs, earthstars, some polypores, jelly fungi, ergots, and smuts. It is often the case that features of the stipe are required to make a positive identification of a mushroom. Such distinguishing characters include: When collecting mushrooms for identification it is critical to maintain all these characters intact by digging the mushroom out of the soil, rather than cutting it off mid-stipe. Stipe (mycology) In mycology, a stipe () is the stem or stalk-like feature supporting the cap of a mushroom. Like all tissues of the mushroom other than the hymenium, the stipe is composed of sterile hyphal tissue. In many
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