Why "Red bread mold" is an inappropriate name for Neurospora
David D. Perkins
Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford. CA 94025-5020
Fungal Genetics Newsletter 52:7-8
The common names "red bread mold" and "bread mold" are inaccurate and
misleading. They should be abandoned.
If an organism is already well known to the public before scientists adopt it
for research, the popular, vernacular name usually continues to be used.
Examples are yeast for Saccharomyces, mouse for Mus,
corn for Zea mays, and
silkworm for Bombyx. These common names are well established, and users are
generally comfortable with them. However, some widely used research organisms
happen to have acquired popular names that are clearly inaccurate or misleading.
Such has been the fate of Drosophila and Neurospora.
Melvin Green (2002) has protested the use of "fruit fly" for Drosophila,
pointing out that the name does not apply for the many Drosophila species that
use substrates other than fruit, and that it leads to confusion with the
Mediterranean fruit fly, a serious agricultural pest. He urges that the popular
name fruit fly be abandoned and that the scientific name Drosophila be used in all
scientific literature and in textbooks.
As with the name fruit fly for Drosophila, objection can be made to using
red
bread mold for Neurospora. The vernacular name is imprecise and misleading in
two respects, regarding both color and substrate. As to color, homothallic
Neurospora species are devoid of conidia and of visible carotenoid pigments,
while N. crassa and other conidiating species, which do display carotenoids, are
orange or yellow-orange rather than red. When dark-grown cultures of a
conidiating Neurospora species are first brought into the light, they are
colorless. Then, within an hour, they become pigmented. The initial blush of
color is pink or red, but this is quickly transformed to orange. The ephemeral
red stage, which is rarely seen and is probably unknown to most observers, seems
a poor choice for naming the organism.
As to substrate, Neurospora existed for millions of years on natural substrates,
in the absence of human artifacts. Calling Neurospora a bread mold might be
considered an example of anthropocentric arrogance. Although Neurospora is able
to grow profusely on bread, and was first recorded as a nuisance in bakeries (Payen
1843; see Perkins 1991), its occurrence is rare compared to other contaminating
molds, especially since antifungal agents were introduced and bakery sanitation
was improved. I have myself seen many examples of moldy bread that was black or
green, but never one that was orange or red.
Unfortunately, the vernacular name red bread mold was used by Shear and Dodge in
the title of the classic 1927 paper in which they first described the sexual
phase and named the genus. Dodge continued to use the term, as for example in
1952: "The old red bread-mold has at last come into its own." Although the term
has largely fallen out of use in the primary scientific literature, it persists
in popular writing and in textbooks. (A Google search finds hundreds of entries
having "bread mold", "red bread mold", or "pink bread mold" associated with
"Neurospora" in the same document.)
Shear and Dodge had precedence for calling the mold red. Already in the first
published account of Neurospora (then called Oidium), Payen (1843) used the
terms "champignons rouges" and "champignon de coleur rouge-orange". Their
terminology is understandable because they observed pigment development at the
transition stage, in colonies that had just been moved from dark to light (see
colored plate from Payen, reproduced as Figure 1 in Borkovich et al. (2004).
Green (2002) asks the question "Should common usage override biological
precision?" Although use of red bread mold by journalists and others in the
popular press may seem inconsequential, it is imprecise and misleading. The
professional biologist, for whom precision is important, should set a good
example by avoiding use of the terms bread mold or red bread mold. In contexts
where the simple name Neurospora does not suffice and a descriptive vernacular
term is needed, an alternative such as orange mold or filamentous fungus
should
be used.
References.
Borkovich, K. A., L. A. Alex, O. Yarden, et al. 2004. Lessons from the genome
sequence of Neurospora crassa: Tracing the path from genomic blueprint to multicellular organism. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 68: 1-108.
Dodge, B. O. 1952. The fungi come into their own. Mycologia. 44: 273-291.
Green, M. M. 2002. It really is not a fruit fly. Genetics 162: 1-3.
Payen, A. (rapporteur) 1843. Extrain d'un rapport addressé à M. Le Maréchal Duc
de Dalmatie, Ministre de la Guerre, Président du Conseil, sur une altération
extraordinaire du pain de munition. Ann. Chim. Phys. 3e Sér. 9: 5-21.
Perkins, D. D. 1991. The first published scientific study of Neurospora,
including a description of photoinduction of carotenoids. Fungal Genet. Newsl.
38: 64-65.
Shear, C. L., and B. O. Dodge. 1927. Life histories and heterothallism of the
red bread-mold fungi of the Monilia sitophila group. J. Agr. Res. 34: 1019-1042.