Mushrooms - from assassins to companions for dinner

According to Roman legend, there is a cruel kid who often tortures the fox by tying straw to the fox's tail and burning it. St. Robigus felt so disgruntled that he punished the people with a curse on the wheat - rust - it was a nightmare caused by the fungus that made the crop look as if it were burned. Centuries later, the Romans still sought ways to please the gods by sacrificing animals such as unlucky dogs or cows born with rusty feathers.

Robigus - Lord of mushrooms - is still very angry with us, but today he is also collecting sacrifices. In the eastern United States, thousands of bats residing in the cave were killed by a strange disease caused by fungi - called white nose syndrome. Hundreds of thousands, even millions of others, are also at risk. Frogs and newts around the world also die in large numbers due to a fungal disorder called chytridiomycosis - the skin seal of amphibians and disordered blood chemistry. Forests located along the west and south coasts of North America are drying up because of the fungus' growth of pine beetles injected into the trunk.

We have lost tall tall chestnut plants because of the blight and also lost their favorite shade trees due to the disease of 'Dutch du Wood'. We cannot reverse the fungus from the world on the contrary and don't want that. Mushrooms make a powerful empire with stratification including the empires of Animalia and Plantae - bacteria and unicellular organisms. About 100,000 species of mushrooms are known, scientists estimate that at least about 1.5 million more species have yet to be discovered.

Fungi are present everywhere, on every continent and even in the ocean, floating in the air, clinging to the soil, dwelling on our skin, invading the mucous, and growing impurities Assembly on peaches is no longer fresh. Although some fungi cause disease, can kill living tissues when they enter; but most fungal species are harmless, many species play an essential role in the forms of life around them.

David J. McLaughlin, a mushroom researcher at the University of Minnesota, said: 'Mushrooms are the main decomposers', they are more active than bacteria, worms and maggots in the septic industry.

Mushrooms also have a symbiotic relationship in order to establish relationships between empires that keep mushrooms nourished, in return for their partners to "borrow" some of their abilities. About 90% of all terrestrial plants depend on a fungus called root fungus. Root fungi 'carved' on the roots of plants and live modestly based on sugar taken from plants; At the same time, mushrooms also provide plants with nutrients from soil such as phosphorus and nitrogen. Botanists believe that plants can never make great strides in the development of the ground 500 million years ago without the help of root fungi.

Mushrooms also promote human culture at the same time. In order to get a loaf of bread or a pitcher of wine as a bait for new things, we need to thank Saccharomyces - or the yeast of bread makers and brewers.

Mushrooms join the army of the oldest and most massive empires in the biological world.(Photo: The New York Times)

Recently, Saccharomyces is considered a model organism in the laboratory. It is an appropriate means to study how genes work as well as the way cells divide. At the same time, research on mushrooms is much cheaper than conducting experiments on mice. Mushroom cells have surprising similarities to animal cells. Researchers have recently determined that fungi and animals separate only a few million years after the two separate the branches from the plant.

Characteristic characteristics of fungi are related to how to eat and structure. While animals eat first and then digest inside, fungi do the opposite. After clinging to the appropriate food source, they release the enzyme to break down substances that make up 'porridge' containing sugar and amino acids, from which they can absorb it through the membrane surrounding the mushroom mycelium. Some fungi have a very simple structure, even just one cell, but other species can grow spawns yet billions of tiny gametes are capable of developing into billions of overflowing mushrooms. vitality.

The most common reproductive form is the mushroom cap , which contains multicolored pigments that contain a confusing purpose and their shape is also difficult to understand. When there is enough space and food, mycelium can disperse on thousands of acres of land and last for centuries or even millennia. Genetically identical mushrooms grow all over the ground. Biologists argue that it is because of the massiveness of the empire that mushrooms are qualified to become one of the oldest and most massive species on Earth.

Most fungi adapt to cool temperatures or temperatures in forests, about 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit, which is why fungal pathogens often grow on plants or blood animals. cold like insects, reptiles or amphibians.

However, not all diseases caused by fungi cause death. The toxic fungus is thought to have caused a large number of wild amphibians to die today that may have been spread from frogs used in medical experiments.

With high body temperature, mammals and birds are less susceptible to fungal diseases, so fungal diseases in these animals also stop at the epidermis. Bats are mammals, but the species suffering from white nose syndrome is the hibernating bat in the cave. According to microbiologist David S. Blehert, when they fall into hibernation, their body temperature drops, only a few degrees higher than the temperature in the cave. David is working with the US Wildlife and Health Center of the US Geological Survey in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dr Blehert said: 'The pathogen causes white nose syndrome to treat bats as if they were forgotten cheese pots located behind the refrigerator'. Besides, the pathogenic fungus seems to be unusually toxic. 'We found mortality rates exceeding 90% in some areas,' Blehert added.

Since the white nose syndrome was first discovered in western Albany in March 2007, it has spread to bat colonies in 9 regions and is also approaching bat colonies with a concentration of 300,000, creating into the "herd of the largest hibernating mammals on the planet". Efforts to prevent the development of the disease, the authorities protecting wildlife have blocked human traffic through the caves, which is currently the only measure they have to deal with the bout. St. Robigus's wrath.