Oyster mushroom fungus uses nerve gas to paralyse and eat tiny worms

1 year ago 79

The fungus that produces oyster mushrooms preys connected tiny animals by releasing a paralysing nervus state called 3-octanone earlier increasing into their bodies

Life 18 January 2023

By Alice Klein

Oyster mushrooms are delicious, but they person a little-known acheronian side: the fungus that produces them paralyses and kills nematode worms utilizing a nervus gas, earlier sucking retired their insides.

Oyster mushrooms are the reproductive structures – oregon fruiting bodies – of the fungus Pleurotus ostreatus. We person known since the 1980s that this fungus preys connected nematodes, which are microscopic roundworms, but however it does this has been a mystery.

Yen-Ping Hsueh astatine Academia Sinica, a probe institute successful Taiwan, and her colleagues antecedently discovered that P. ostreatus contains tiny, lollipop-shaped structures that break unfastened erstwhile nematodes property their heads against them. They person present recovered that, erstwhile ruptured, these structures merchandise a state that is highly toxic to nematodes’ tense systems.

The researchers determined this by archetypal inducing thousands of random familial mutations successful the fungus, aft which they noticed that mutants lacking these lollipop structures were nary longer toxic to the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.

Next, the researchers analysed the contents of the lollipop structures successful non-mutant fungi and recovered that they were packed with a volatile chemic called 3-octanone. When they exposed 4 antithetic nematode taxon to this chemical, it triggered a monolithic influx of calcium ions into nervus and musculus cells passim their bodies, starring to accelerated paralysis and death.

Hsueh calls this a “nerve state successful a lollipop” sidesplitting strategy.

an electron microscope representation of the lollipop structures connected oyster mushroom hyphae

The toxic lollipop structures are contiguous connected hyphae, the long, branching structures that turn wrong rotting wood and marque up astir of the fungus. The oyster mushrooms themselves are non-toxic, says Hsueh.

After the fungus kills its prey, its hyphae turn into the nematodes’ bodies to suck retired their contents. It whitethorn bash this to sorb nitrogen, since this nutrient is deficient successful the rotting wood connected which the fungus mostly grows, says Hsueh.

Nematodes are the astir abundant animals successful soil, which makes them a earthy nutrient prime for fungi, she says. Other fungi usage antithetic tactics to drawback nematode prey, including sticky traps and nooses that tighten astir their necks.

The uncovering that P. ostreatus feeds connected nematodes has led to some treatment successful the vegan community astir whether oyster mushrooms are a genuinely vegan food.

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