Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum Here. Unless you're a mushroom lover, a gardener,
Speaker 1: or someone especially prone to skin infections, fungi might not
Speaker 1: hold much interest for you. After all, fungi generally keep
Speaker 1: themselves hidden, and when they do show up, it's often unwelcome.
Speaker 1: You end up with a discolored and misshapen toenail, or
Speaker 1: the shrub in your yard has brown spots all over
Speaker 1: its leaves, or there's a layer of slime on your leftovers.
Speaker 1: For the article this episode is based on, it has
Speaker 1: Stuff Work. Spoke with Maren Brewer, Associate Professor of mycology
Speaker 1: that's the study of fungi in the Department of Plant
Speaker 1: Pathology at the University of Georgia. She said, Unfortunately, a
Speaker 1: lot of what the general public knows about fungi is bad.
Speaker 1: We focus on the ones that are causing plant or
Speaker 1: human diseases, but in general, the vast majority of fungi
Speaker 1: are hanging out and breaking down organic matter, not killing anything.
Speaker 1: Fungi are actually in their own taxonomic kingdom, meaning they've
Speaker 1: got something going on that's very different from every other
Speaker 1: type of organism on Earth. The immediately obvious thing that
Speaker 1: sets fungi apart from everyone else is that they reproduce
Speaker 1: exclusively via spores, which are little packets of DNA that
Speaker 1: float on the air or pitcheride some other way, and
Speaker 1: then nestle into the soil or an old sandwich or
Speaker 1: whatever and set up shop, creating a new fungal body.
Speaker 1: Although they are extremely diverse, all fungi have filament like
Speaker 1: growth structures called hiphi. One filament is a hypha. A
Speaker 1: few of them are high fie, and when there's a
Speaker 1: big mass of high fie we refer to it as mycillium.
Speaker 1: All fungi are eukaryotes. This means their cells are more
Speaker 1: similar to those of plants and animals than to bacteria
Speaker 1: and archaa, which are prokaryotes. Fungi cells have membrane bound
Speaker 1: organelles and nucleus where their DNA is stored. But to
Speaker 1: borrow a phrase from some of my coworkers, here's where
Speaker 1: it gets crazy. Their hyphie grows similar to the way
Speaker 1: that plants do, with new cells propagating out from the
Speaker 1: developed ones, each with its own cell wall. However, those
Speaker 1: cell walls contain tough, bendable kitan like animal cells do.
Speaker 1: Kitan is also the main ingredient in the scales of
Speaker 1: fish and the exoskeletons of arthropods. Fungi also breathe oxygen
Speaker 1: and release carbon dioxide like animals. Like plants, fungi can't
Speaker 1: move around, but unlike plants, they can't photosynthesize sunlight and
Speaker 1: water into energy. Instead, like animals, they eat by excreting
Speaker 1: digestive enzymes and absorbing nutrients from the compounds that those
Speaker 1: enzymes break down. That we do this internally in our stomachs,
Speaker 1: but not every animal does. However, because fungi can't move
Speaker 1: around to catch prey, they found a decent workaround eating
Speaker 1: things that hold very still, like dead still often literally.
Speaker 1: Depending on the type of fungus, they might eat fallen
Speaker 1: trees or the outer dead layers of an animal's skin.
Speaker 1: You name it, there's probably a fungus out there that
Speaker 1: makes an enzyme that can break it down. Right now,
Speaker 1: billions of beneficial fungi can be found outside your window
Speaker 1: in the soil, decomposing organic matter. Brewer said, of which
Speaker 1: enzymes the specific fungus has determines what it can eat,
Speaker 1: not all fungi come with the same enzymes. The ones
Speaker 1: that can break down cellulose are the ones that grow
Speaker 1: on plants or plant matter. The ones that break down
Speaker 1: keratin grow well on skin or pear or puves. It's
Speaker 1: a living for them, and it's also great for us,
Speaker 1: as what they're doing is of utmost importance to the
Speaker 1: health of the planet's ecosystem. Not only are they responsible
Speaker 1: for turning organic matter that is dead plants and animal
Speaker 1: tissue into soil again, but the vast majority of the
Speaker 1: world's plant families have some sort of symbiotic relationship with fungi,
Speaker 1: in which the fungi pass water and nutrients into the
Speaker 1: roots of the plants, and the plants make sugars for
Speaker 1: the fungi to eat. Because of their eating style, fungi
Speaker 1: are the great decomposers, regardless of whether they're a mushroom
Speaker 1: on the ground, a bracket on a tree, a puffball,
Speaker 1: a plant pathogen, or a film of mold on the
Speaker 1: wall of that forgotten tub of yogurt in the back
Speaker 1: of your refrigerator. There are several different pyla of fungi,
Speaker 1: but most of the ones we're familiar with fit into
Speaker 1: one of two of them, Basidio my Kota and Asco Mykota.
Speaker 1: The phylum that houses most of the fungi we think
Speaker 1: of as mushrooms is the Basidia my Kota. They're in
Speaker 1: the grocery store and making fairy rings in your yard,
Speaker 1: cute little shelves on trees, and sometimes cause a plant diseases.
Speaker 1: Most of these have fruiting bodies that spring up from
Speaker 1: the mycilium formation rooted inside a dead log, for example,
Speaker 1: or under the soil. What we think of as the
Speaker 1: mushroom is just the reproductive structure that the mycillium sends
Speaker 1: up to release spores. Once this spoor lands, the high
Speaker 1: fee start growing out in all directions, which is why
Speaker 1: mushrooms often grow in a ring formation like fairy rings.
Speaker 1: The other group of fungi you would likely recognize is
Speaker 1: the Aska mycota. Most molds, for instance, are in this phylum.
Speaker 1: They grow in circles like all fungi, so if you
Speaker 1: leave your coffee out for a few days, you'll notice
Speaker 1: the mold grows radially out from a single point. Yeasts,
Speaker 1: moral mushrooms, truffles, and cut fungi are in this group,
Speaker 1: though most don't produce a large fruiting body like some
Speaker 1: of those. After that, fungi become less immediately recognizable. Brewer said,
Speaker 1: they start getting wee. There are lots of animal parasites
Speaker 1: out there, like aquatic fung guy that are flagellated so
Speaker 1: they can move around in water, which includes the cretid
Speaker 1: fung guy that are killing off all of the planet's frogs.
Speaker 1: A new phyla are being figured out all the time,
Speaker 1: so that's exciting. We would say it's exciting. Indeed. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is based on the article the Fungi among Guy
Speaker 1: are the Great Decomposers on how stuffworks dot Com, written
Speaker 1: by Jesslin Shields. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang and Ramsey youwn a four more podcast.
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