Multidrug-resistant fungal infections are an emerging global health threat. Figuring out how fungi evade treatments offers new avenues to counter resistance.
Eventually weather, pests and disease will take their toll, but the story doesn’t end there.
Emanuel David / 500px via Getty Images
Raw flour at the store still contains live microorganisms. And while cooking can kill the fungi, it doesn’t destroy any illness-causing mycotoxins that might be present.
Slime mould navigating a food grid.
Chris R. Reid/Macquarie University
Slime moulds feature throughout HBO’s The Last of Us. While they aren’t a true fungus, they do have a lot in common with zombies.
In the HBO series ‘The Last of Us,’ the parasitic fungus cordyeps mutates, and jumps from insects to humans and quickly spreads around the world, rendering its victims helpless to control their thoughts and actions.
(HBO)
While ‘The Last of Us’ is a dramatic projection of a deadly fungal outbreak, it is based, if not in reality, in logic. And it’s a reminder that fungal infections are growing more resistant.
Over hundreds of million years of evolution, ants have come up with some pretty smart solutions to problems of agriculture, navigation and architecture. People could learn a thing or two.
The pumpkin on the right has a fungal disease known as black rot.
Matt Kasson
With the dual threats of antibiotic resistance and emerging pandemics, finding new drugs becomes even more urgent. A trove of medicines may be lying under our nose.
Fungi underpin life on Earth, but are far less well catalogued and understood than animals and plants. Three scientists call for including fungi in conservation strategies and environmental laws.
Plants communicate with the fungi on their roots, but the effects on the ecosystem of deliberately adding fungi as a fertilizer are unknown — and might be harmful.
Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Biological Sciences, Professor of Biological Sciences and Biomedical Informatics, and Director of the Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative, Vanderbilt University