Filamentous fungi grow in form of multicellular tubular hyphae (‘simple multicellularity’). When hyphae aggregate, more complex three-dimensional structures emerge. Differentiation of hyphal cells adds to morphological and functional complexity of aggregated fungal organs (‘complex multicellularity’) that serve such different biological purposes as sustenance, resilience, or sexual or asexual reproduction. The most complex structures in the fungal kingdom are the multicellular sexual fruiting bodies with distinct fungal tissues and multiple cell types. Between fungal taxa, fruiting bodies come in various morphological shapes, colors and sizes. So far, it is largely unclear what genetically determines such complex multicellularity in fungi and how and how often core functions of such multicellularity evolved. Research targets at to find out what is behind the complex multicellularity in fungal fruiting body development. Combined inputs of environmental signals to transcription of participating genes are coordinated in the nuclei by distinctive transcription factors. Comparative analyses of big data sets derived from sequenced genomes of different fungal species and from sequenced situational transcriptomes can extract what is common in developmental programs as potential core functions in multicellularity and also identify that what is specific in individual development.

丝状真菌以多细胞管状菌丝（“简单多细胞性”）的形式生长。当菌丝聚集时，会出现更复杂的三维结构。菌丝细胞的分化增加了聚集的真菌器官的形态和功能复杂性（“复杂的多细胞性”），这些器官具有不同的生物学目的，例如维持，弹性或有性或无性生殖。真菌界中最复杂的结构是具有不同真菌组织和多种细胞类型的多细胞性子实体。在真菌类群之间，子实体具有各种形态的形状，颜色和大小。迄今为止，很大程度上尚不清楚是什么基因决定了真菌中这种复杂的多细胞性，以及这种多细胞性的核心功能如何以及以多长时间形成一次。研究的目标是找出真菌子实体发育中复杂的多细胞性背后的原因。环境信号对参与基因转录的组合输入在细胞核中通过独特的转录因子进行协调。对来自不同真菌物种的测序基因组和时序情景转录组的大数据集进行比较分析，可以提取出开发程序中常见的多细胞性潜在核心功能，并且可以识别出个体发育中的特异功能。