Amazing Fungi Are The Oldest Organism, Has Many Potentials
February 22, 2021 at 8:03 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
Classification
Fungi are usually classified into four divisions: the Chytridiomycota (chytrids), Zygomycota (bread molds), Ascomycota (yeasts and sac fungi, and the Basidiomycota (club fungi). Placement into a division is based on the way the fungus reproduces sexually. The shape and internal structure of the sporangia, which produce the spores, are the not useful character for identifying these various major groups.
Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms – as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants.”
Microscopic yeasts are fungi, as are the sprawling networks of honey fungi, or Armillaria, which are among the largest organisms in the world. Many of the most dramatic events on Earth have been – and continue to be – a result of fungal activity. Plants only made it out of the water around 500 million years ago because of their collaboration with fungi, which served as their root systems for tens of millions of years until plants could evolve their own.
Today, more than 90% of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi – from the Greek words for fungus (mykes) and root (rhiza) – which can link trees in shared networks sometimes referred to as the “wood wide web.” This ancient association gave rise to all recognizable life on land, the future of which depends on the continued ability of plants and animals.
The Kingdom Fungi, is the home to molds, mushrooms, lichens, rusts, smuts and yeasts. It comprises eukaryotes with remarkably diverse life histories that make essential contributions to the biosphere, human industry, medicine and research. (Eukaryote cells contain membrane bound organelles including a nucleus, mitochondria and an endoplasmic reticulum. Eukaryotic cells are larger and more complex than prokaryotic cells found in archea and bacteria.)
Entangled Life
According to Merlin Sheldrake, in his book “Entangled Life,” “Fungi are everywhere, but they are easy to miss. They are inside us and around us. They sustain us and all that we depend on. Fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave.”
Ancient Egyptian papyruses from 1500 BCE refer to the curative properties of mold, and in 1640, the king’s herbalist in London, John Parkinson, described the use of molds to treat wounds.
But it was only in 1928 that Alexander Fleming discovered that a mold produced a bacteria-killing chemical called penicillin. Penicillin became the first modern antibiotic and has with its derivatives saved countless lives.
Fleming’s discovery is widely credited as one of the defining moments of modern medicine and arguably helped to shift the balance of power in the Second World War. Penicillin, a compound that could defend fungi from bacterial infection, turned out to defend humans as well.
This is not unusual. Although fungi have long been lumped together with plants, they are actually more closely related to animals – an example of the kind of category mistake that researchers regularly make in their struggle to understand fungal lives. Since the discovery of penicillin we have learned how pharmaceutically prolific the species is.
Today we depend on them for many other chemicals including : cyclosporine (an immunosuppressant drug that makes organ transplants possible), cholesterol-lowering statins, a host of powerful antiviral and anticancer compounds (including the multibillion-dollar drug Taxol, originally extracted from the fungi that live within yew trees), not to mention alcohol (fermented by a yeast) and psilocybin (the active component in psychedelic mushrooms recently shown in clinical trials to be capable of lifting severe depression and anxiety). Sixty percent of the enzymes used in industry are generated by fungi, and fifteen percent of all vaccines are produced by engineered strains of yeast.
Final Thoughts
Fungi have received only a tiny fraction of the attention given to animals and plants. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi in the world – six to ten times the estimated number of plant species – meaning that a mere six percent of all fungal species have been described. We are only just beginning to understand the intricacies and sophistications of fungal lives.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
Classification
Fungi are usually classified into four divisions: the Chytridiomycota (chytrids), Zygomycota (bread molds), Ascomycota (yeasts and sac fungi, and the Basidiomycota (club fungi). Placement into a division is based on the way the fungus reproduces sexually. The shape and internal structure of the sporangia, which produce the spores, are the not useful character for identifying these various major groups.
Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms – as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants.”
Microscopic yeasts are fungi, as are the sprawling networks of honey fungi, or Armillaria, which are among the largest organisms in the world. Many of the most dramatic events on Earth have been – and continue to be – a result of fungal activity. Plants only made it out of the water around 500 million years ago because of their collaboration with fungi, which served as their root systems for tens of millions of years until plants could evolve their own.
Today, more than 90% of plants depend on mycorrhizal fungi – from the Greek words for fungus (mykes) and root (rhiza) – which can link trees in shared networks sometimes referred to as the “wood wide web.” This ancient association gave rise to all recognizable life on land, the future of which depends on the continued ability of plants and animals.
The Kingdom Fungi, is the home to molds, mushrooms, lichens, rusts, smuts and yeasts. It comprises eukaryotes with remarkably diverse life histories that make essential contributions to the biosphere, human industry, medicine and research. (Eukaryote cells contain membrane bound organelles including a nucleus, mitochondria and an endoplasmic reticulum. Eukaryotic cells are larger and more complex than prokaryotic cells found in archea and bacteria.)
Entangled Life
According to Merlin Sheldrake, in his book “Entangled Life,” “Fungi are everywhere, but they are easy to miss. They are inside us and around us. They sustain us and all that we depend on. Fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behavior and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways that we think, feel, and behave.”
Ancient Egyptian papyruses from 1500 BCE refer to the curative properties of mold, and in 1640, the king’s herbalist in London, John Parkinson, described the use of molds to treat wounds.
But it was only in 1928 that Alexander Fleming discovered that a mold produced a bacteria-killing chemical called penicillin. Penicillin became the first modern antibiotic and has with its derivatives saved countless lives.
Fleming’s discovery is widely credited as one of the defining moments of modern medicine and arguably helped to shift the balance of power in the Second World War. Penicillin, a compound that could defend fungi from bacterial infection, turned out to defend humans as well.
This is not unusual. Although fungi have long been lumped together with plants, they are actually more closely related to animals – an example of the kind of category mistake that researchers regularly make in their struggle to understand fungal lives. Since the discovery of penicillin we have learned how pharmaceutically prolific the species is.
Today we depend on them for many other chemicals including : cyclosporine (an immunosuppressant drug that makes organ transplants possible), cholesterol-lowering statins, a host of powerful antiviral and anticancer compounds (including the multibillion-dollar drug Taxol, originally extracted from the fungi that live within yew trees), not to mention alcohol (fermented by a yeast) and psilocybin (the active component in psychedelic mushrooms recently shown in clinical trials to be capable of lifting severe depression and anxiety). Sixty percent of the enzymes used in industry are generated by fungi, and fifteen percent of all vaccines are produced by engineered strains of yeast.
Final Thoughts
Fungi have received only a tiny fraction of the attention given to animals and plants. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2 and 3.8 million species of fungi in the world – six to ten times the estimated number of plant species – meaning that a mere six percent of all fungal species have been described. We are only just beginning to understand the intricacies and sophistications of fungal lives.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. His new book “Science Snippets” is available from Amazon and other book sellers. It contains a number of previously published columns. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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