Secrets of the mushroom world: the spider's brain as an analogue of the human

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In 2000, Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a biologist and physicist at the Japanese University of Hokkaido, took a sample of a yellow mold and placed it at the entrance to a maze that is used to test the intelligence and memory of mice. At the other end of the maze, he placed a sugar cube. The mushroom not only found a path to sugar, but also used the shortest path for this.

What are mushrooms thinking?

Physarum polycephalum smelled like sugar and began to send its sprouts in search of it. The spider webs of the mushroom bifurcated at each intersection of the maze, and those that fell into a dead end turned around and began to look in other directions. For several hours, mushroom webs filled the maze passages, and by the end of the day one of them found its way to sugar.

After that, Toshiyuki and his team of researchers took a piece of the spider's web of the mushroom that participated in the first experiment, and put it at the entrance of a copy of the same labyrinth, also with a sugar cube at its other end. What happened amazed everyone. In the first instant, the cobweb branched into two: one sprout made its way to the sugar, without a single extra turn, the other climbed the wall of the labyrinth and crossed it directly, along the ceiling, straight to the goal. The mushroom web not only remembered the road, but also changed the rules of the game.

I dared to resist the tendency to treat these creatures like plants. When you do mushroom research for several years, you start to notice two things. First, mushrooms are closer to the animal kingdom than it seems. Second, their actions sometimes appear to be the result of a deliberate decision. I thought the mushrooms should be given the opportunity to try to solve the riddles.

Further research by Toshiyuki found that mushrooms can plan transport routes as well and much faster than professional engineers. Toshiyuki took a map of Japan and placed pieces of food in places corresponding to major cities in the country. He put the mushrooms "in Tokyo". After 23 hours, they built a linear web of cobwebs to all the food pieces. The result is an almost exact replica of the rail network around Tokyo.

It is not that difficult to connect several dozen points; but connecting them efficiently and most economically is not at all easy. I believe that our research will not only help us understand how to improve infrastructure, but also how to build more efficient information networks.

RIDDLE OF ANOTHER BEING

According to conservative estimates, there are about 160 thousand strains of fungi on Earth, most of which have impressive abilities.

For example, in Chernobyl, a mushroom was discovered that feeds on radioactive products and, at the same time, cleans the air around it. This mushroom was found on the wall of a destroyed nuclear power plant, which for many years after the disaster continued to produce radiation that destroys all life within a radius of several kilometers.

While exploring the Amazon forest, two biology students at Yale University found the fungus Pestalotiopsis microspora, which can degrade plastic. This ability was discovered when the fungus ate the petri dish in which it was grown.

Until now, neither our science nor our technology is capable of this. Plastic contamination is one of the biggest technological problems. Today we have high hopes for this fungus. - Professor Scott A. Strobl.

Geneticists from the American Institute of Bioenergy succeeded in making the mushroom strain digest the natural sugar xylose faster. The potential significance of this discovery lies in the creation of a new, cheap and fast way of producing clean biofuels.

It would seem, how does a “primitive” organism, without a brain and limited in movement, perform miracles beyond the control of science?

To try to understand the world of the mushroom, you must first clarify something. Shiitake, portobello and champignon are not only the names of edible mushrooms. Each of them is a living organism, representing a network of millions of thinnest cobwebs underground. The mushrooms peering out of the ground are just the "fingertips" of these cobwebs, the "tools" with which the body spreads its seeds. Each such “finger” contains thousands of spores. They are carried by the wind and animals. When the spores fall into the ground, they create new webs and germinate with new mushrooms.

This creature breathes oxygen. It is so unusual from a biological point of view that it belongs to its own kingdom, separated from both animals and plants.

But what do we really know about this life form?

We do not know what prompts the underground system of cobwebs at a certain moment to release mushrooms to the surface of the earth; why does one mushroom grow towards one tree and another towards another; and why some of them produce deadly poisons, while others are tasty, healthy and fragrant. In some cases, we cannot even predict the timeline for their development. Mushrooms can appear in three years, or even 30 years after their spore has found a suitable tree. In other words, we do not know even the most basic things about mushrooms. - Michael Pollan, researcher.

QUEEN OF THE DEAD

We find it difficult to understand mushrooms because of their anatomical structure. When you take a tomato in your hand, you are holding the whole tomato in your hand as it is. But you cannot pluck a mushroom and examine its structure. A mushroom is just the fruit of a large and complex organism. The web of cobwebs is too thin to be cleared of soil without damaging it. - Sgula Motspi, microbiologist.

Another problem is that most forest mushrooms cannot be domesticated and are very difficult to grow, both for research and for industrial purposes.

They choose only a certain litter, they themselves decide when to germinate. Often their choice falls on old trees that cannot be transferred to another place. And even if we plant hundreds of suitable trees in the forest and spray billions of spores on the ground, there is no guarantee that we will get the mushrooms at a reasonable time. - Michael Pollan, researcher.

The systems of nutrition, growth, reproduction and energy production in fungi are completely different from those in animals. They do not have chlorophyll and therefore, unlike plants, they do not directly use the energy of the sun. Champignons, shiitake and portobello, for example, grow on a litter of wilted plants.

Like animals, mushrooms digest food, but, unlike them, they digest food outside their bodies: mushrooms secrete enzymes that decompose organic matter into its components, and then absorb these molecules.

If soil is the stomach of the globe, then mushrooms are its digestive juices. Without their ability to decompose and process organic matter, the earth would have suffocated long ago. Dead matter would accumulate endlessly, the carbon cycle would be interrupted, and all living things would be left without food.

We focus on life and growth in our research, but in nature, death and decay are equally important. Mushrooms are the undisputed rulers of the kingdom of death. Therefore, by the way, there are so many of them in cemeteries. But the biggest secret is the enormous energy of the mushrooms. There are mushrooms that can crack the asphalt, glow in the dark, process a whole bunch of petrochemical waste overnight and turn it into an edible and nutritious product. The Coprinopsis atramentaria fungus is able to grow a fruiting body in a few hours and then, in one day, turn into a puddle of black ink.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms change people's minds. There are poisonous mushrooms that can kill an elephant. And the paradox is that they all contain tiny amounts of calories that researchers usually use to measure energy. Our way of measuring energy doesn't seem to fit here. Calories characterize solar energy stored in plants. But mushrooms are weakly associated with the sun. They germinate at night and wither during the day. Their energy is something completely different.

- Michael Pollan, researcher.

INTERNET UNDER THE EARTH

The mycelium is the complex infrastructure on which all the plants in the world are located. In ten cubic centimeters of soil, you can find eight kilometers of its cobwebs. The human foot covers about half a million kilometers of closely spaced cobwebs. - Paul Stemets, mycologist.

What's going on in these webs?

In the early 1990s, the idea first emerged that the web of these cobwebs not only conveyed food and chemicals, but was also an intelligent and self-learning communication network. By looking at even small sections of this network, it is easy to recognize a familiar structure. The graphic images of the internet look exactly the same. The network branches, and if one of the branches fails, then it is quickly replaced by workarounds. Its nodes, located in strategic areas, are better supplied with power due to less active places, and are enlarged. These webs have sensitivity. And each web can convey information to the entire network.

And there is no "central server". Each web is independent, and the information it collects can be transmitted to the network in all directions. Thus, the basic model of the Internet has existed at all times, only it was hiding in the ground. - Paul Stemec, mycologist

The network itself seems to be able to grow indefinitely. For example, in the state of Michigan, a mycelium was found, which has grown underground to an area of nine square kilometers. It is estimated to be around 2,000 years old.

When does the network decide to grow mushrooms?

Sometimes the reason is the danger to the future of the network. If the forest feeding the network burns out, the mycelium stops receiving sugars from the tree roots. Then she germinates mushrooms at its most distant ends, so that they spread fungal spores, "free" her genes and give them the opportunity to find a new place. This is how the expression "mushrooms after rain" appeared. The rain washes away organic rot from the ground and, in essence, deprives the network of its power source - then the network sends "rescue teams" with disputes in search of a new refuge.

NIGHTMARE FOR INSECTS

"Finding a new home" is another thing that distinguishes mushrooms from the animal and plant kingdoms. There are mushrooms that spread their spores just like fruits spread their seeds. Others produce pheromones that make living things compulsively crave them. White truffle gatherers use it to search for pigs, as the smell of these mushrooms is similar to that of an alpha boar.

However, there are more complex and cruel ways of spreading fungi. Observation of the West African ants of the species Megaloponera foetens recorded that they climb tall trees every year, and with such force they pierce their jaws into the trunk that after that they cannot free themselves and die. Previously, there were no cases of mass suicide of ants.

It turned out that insects are acting against their will, and someone else sends them to death. The reason is the smallest spores of the הטומנטלה fungus, which sometimes manage to get into the ants' mouths. Once in the insect's head, the spore sends chemicals to its brain. After that, the ant begins to climb the nearest tree and plunges its jaws into its bark. Here, as if waking up from a nightmare, he begins to try to free himself and, in the end, exhausted, dies. After about two weeks, mushrooms הטומנטלה sprout from his head.

On trees in Cameroon, you can see hundreds of mushrooms growing from the bodies of ants. For fungi, this power over the brain is a means of reproduction: they use the legs of an ant to climb a tree, and the height helps the spread of their spores by the wind; so they find themselves new homes and…. new ants.

The Thai "zombie mushroom" Ophiocordyceps unilateralis encourages the ants that feed on it to climb the leaves of certain plants. The distance that the infected ants travel for this is much greater than the distances in their normal life, and therefore, having reached the leaves, the insects die of fatigue and hunger, and after two weeks mushrooms sprout from their bodies.

These creatures are perhaps the most amazing of all I've seen. We believe they produce LSD-like chemicals, but we haven’t yet come across drugs that induce behavior in someone’s interests. - Professor David Hughes.

Hughes discovered fungi that control the brains of spiders, lice and flies.

This is not coincidence, natural selection, or byproducts of another process. These insects are sent against their will to where they should not be, but mushrooms like. When we transferred the infected ants to other leaves, the mushrooms simply did not germinate. - Professor David Hughes

HOW THE ANTIBIOTICS WERE INVENTED

There is also a positive side to the fact that mushrooms can produce strong poisons. Some of these poisons are effective weapons against our common enemies. For example, microbes.

Of the 160 thousand species of mushrooms, the bodies of which contain complex chemical compounds, science was able to decipher and reproduce only 20, and among them several of the most important medicines were found.

There is a reason mushrooms produce medicines. They always grow in the worst places, damp, hot, in places that are "factories of microbes and viruses." Most plants do not have protection against these factors, but fungi resist. The well-known drug Lipitor, which is one of the few known solutions to the problems of cholesterol and diabetes, was found in the red Chinese mushroom. And enoki and shiitake mushrooms are included in the basket of medicines received by cancer patients in Japan. - Elinor Shavit, micrologist.

Unfortunately, the variety of mushroom medicines is constantly decreasing. The reason is the destruction of woody forests, especially in the Amazon basin.

Along with other life forms, we also destroy mushrooms. The number of their varieties is constantly decreasing and this worries me for purely selfish reasons. The world has presented a stunning gift - a huge natural laboratory for the manufacture of drugs. From penicillin to drugs for cancer, AIDS, flu and senile diseases. The ancient Egyptians called mushrooms "the god of death" for a reason. Today we are consistently destroying this laboratory … - Paul Stemets, mycologist.

Stemets talks about the fomitopsis mushroom. Discovered in 1965, this mushroom has proven to be an effective remedy for tuberculosis, and today it only grows in five locations in the United States. In Europe, this mushroom has already completely disappeared.

With a group of specialists, we went dozens of times to the forests, trying to find several more similar mushrooms. After much effort, we finally found one sample that we managed to grow in the laboratory. Who knows how many people this mushroom will save in the future. - Paul Stemets, mycologist.

Last year, Stemets joined the US Department of Defense's biological defense program and helped in the search and conservation of 300 rare species of mushrooms.

We did an experiment: we collected four heaps of garbage. One was used by us as a control; in the other two, we added chemical and biological substances that decompose waste; over the latter, mushroom spores were sprayed. Returning two months later, we found three dark fetid heaps and one bright, overgrown with hundreds of kilograms of mushrooms … Some of the toxic substances turned into organic ones. The mushrooms attracted insects, they laid eggs, from which caterpillars hatched, and then the birds appeared - and this whole heap turned into a green hill full of life. When we tried to do the same in polluted rivers, we noted the process of cleansing from poisons. Here's what to explore! Perhaps all of our pollution problems can be solved with the right mushrooms. - Paul Stemets, mycologist.

WHERE IS THE BRAIN?

“One estimate is that it works the same way in fungi,” Toshiyuki says. “From a purely biological point of view, each spider web individually receives chemical signals about where to go and what to avoid. The sum of these signals creates a kind of decision-making system. In other words, the intelligence of the mushroom is in its network. Add to that millions of years of evolution under the most difficult conditions, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of different species, and you have something that should be smart enough anyway."

- And this is your explanation of what is happening?

- This is the beginning.