Re:Fungi Lurk Inside Cancers–and Might Speed Their Growth
by cookiengineer on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:42AM
(#33138326)
Your comment reminded me of the Zombie ant fungus which is able to control the movements of ants...and makes them move to better environments that fit the growth requirements of the fungus.
When it's done it uses its host to go as high up the forest as possible to find a better position to release its spores more effectively.
What blew my mind was that some ant colonies have learned that the zombie fungi is susceptible to other fungi infections, which they use as kind of a defense mechanism against the zombie fungi infection. They quarantine infected zombie ants and put other fungi next to it because the zombie fungi otherwise leads to potential eradication of the colony due to it having such a huge spreading factor.
That's why a lot of observed colonies in the tropical forests seem to harvest different types of fungi (for food and defense?).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis
The bacteria essentially learned to signal to the plant which genes it needed to upregulate to produce the nutrients the bacteria wanted. It created an ideal environment for itself by tricking the host's genes.
Biology has evolved all kinds of ways to manipulate life to its end goals of harnessing energy and reproducing. I wouldn't be surprised to learn if some fungi evolved to use mammalian cells to upregulate biochemical pathways for energy production. Nor would I be shocked if this had the side effect of causing those cells to become cancerous.
[1] Side note : I've smelled a lot of different types of bacteria from growing them. E. coli is pretty neutral as far as bacterial smells go, but Agrobacterium has one of the strongest "foot"-like odors I've ever smelled. It's so distinctive.