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Specific fungi in the gut associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and found in people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be altered in a beneficial manner by eating a modified Mediterranean diet, researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine have found. "Our study reveals that unique fungi co-living with bacteria in the gut of patients with MCI can be modulated through a Mediterranean ketogenic diet," said principal investigator Hariom Yadav, assistant professor of molecular medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health. In the single-center, randomized, double-blind crossover pilot study, Yadav's team...

A fungus observed inside Chernobyl is a radiation extremophile that could inspire new technology. Removing radiation and even turning it into energy could help clean disaster sites and enable spaceflight. The fungi use high amounts of melanin to both resist radiation and turn it into energy.

A type of black fungi that eats radiation was discovered inside the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. In 1991, the strange fungi was found growing up the walls of the reactor, which baffled scientists due to the extreme, radiation-heavy environment. Researchers eventually realized that not only was the fungi impervious to the deadly radiation, it seemed to be attracted to it.

One of my favorite family traditions on Thanksgiving is the morning Crap Game. No....wait....that’s Halloween. On Thanksgiving we break the bones of the old bird. Grandma can’t be with us this year as she’s in India hunting tigers or something, so we’ll probably just break Uncle Steve’s little finger instead. Just kidding. We’ll break his index finger. No. We will pull apart the turkey’s wishbone. I am told that this tradition originated with the Romans. They would sit around trying to guess what was under each other’s togas. Contrary to current thought, there were only two choices......a sword or a...

Astronauts on the ISS spend hours every week cleaning the inside of the station's walls to prevent mold from becoming a health problem. Spores of the two most common types of mold on the ISS, Aspergillus and Pennicillium, survive X-ray exposure at 200 times the dose that would kill a human, according to Marta Cortesão, a microbiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, who will present the new research Friday at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 2019). Pennicillium and Aspergillus species are not usually harmful, but inhaling their spores in large amounts can sicken people with weakened...

Scientists have unearthed fossilized fungi in the remote Northwest Territories of the Canadian Arctic dating back to one billion years, in a discovery that could reshape our understanding of how life first arrived on land from the oceans. Fungi, the “Hidden Kingdom,” are not plants. Living things are organized for study into large, basic groups called kingdoms. Fungi were listed in the Plant Kingdom for many years. Then scientists learned that fungi show a closer relation to animals, but are unique and separate life forms. Most fungi build their cell walls out of chitin. This is the same material as...

Those pale button mushrooms in your supermarket hardly do justice to the diversity of fungi. The world hosts an incredible array of these important organisms—and mycologists are discovering more than 2000 new species a year, including ones that live on driftwood, bat guano, and even an oil painting. That’s according to a new report, titled State of the World’s Fungi, from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a botanical research institution in Richmond, U.K. The lavishly illustrated overview covers the usefulness of fungi (think beer, bread, and penicillin, for starters) as well as the serious threats that some fungi pose to...

Whenever I bring up this increasing drive to grant “rights” to “nature” in articles or speeches, invariably someone will ask whether these radicals would also grant unborn humans the same “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles” — typical language of nature-rights proposals — as they advocate for fungi, viruses, rivers, wolves, and forests, all of which would receive enforceable protections under “nature rights” proposals.

I never post, but this is noteworthy. Brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is responsible for five percent of our gross domestic product. From bread to beer and beyond, this fungus has an incredible impact on our lives. Fungi are important!

A bumper crop of deadly wild "death cap" mushrooms in northern California is likely to blame for the poisonings of 14 people in December, health officials say. The culprit: Amanita phalloides, believed to be the world's most dangerous mushroom. All 14 recovered, but three required liver transplants, and a toddler suffered permanent brain damage, the researchers reported. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone picking wild mushrooms have them evaluated by a specialist before eating them.(snip) The 14 people described in the report had eaten wild mushrooms they picked themselves or received from others.(snip) After eating...

NASA is set to use a radical new 'tricorder' DNA sequencer to work out what a mysterious fungus found growing on the International Space Station is. Astronauts have reported funding the strange microbial growths on walls and surfaces, and it has even clogged waterlines. Now, two instruments onboard will be used to analyse it in orbit, allowing mission controllers to work out how to deal with it

Link only. Entertaining, Interesting, and Insightful speech by Newt.

Three hours after Dr. Todd Mitchell’s Dec. 3 flight from Beijing landed in San Francisco, a call demanded his immediate attention. Mitchell, 59, had spent two-and-a-half weeks in China, which has the most mushroom poisoning deaths in the world, sharing the treatment method he developed at Dominican Hospital. The call concerned a Santa Rosa hospital patient believed to have eaten deadly mushrooms. Principal investigator of an amatoxin mushroom poisoning clinical trial that has treated nearly 100 patients across North America in the past 10 years, Mitchell arranged for the patient’s overnight transfer to Dominican Hospital. This patient was the first...

A delicious novelty food with an ugly name Sharon OosthoekGreat minds do not think alike, and thatÂ’s why universities and colleges are the mother of inventions. Click here for the rest of our Bright Ideas series. Click here for the rest of our Campus Food series.Barry Saville: Trent UniversityBarry Saville has spent much of his career figuring out how to stop fungi from infecting food crops. But for the past three years, the Trent University professor has been deliberately infecting corn with a fungus that produces large, whitish-grey kernels he believes have potential as a niche product for market farmers....

After 12 years and six kids together, Angelina Jolie files for divorce from Brad Pitt just after their two-year wedding anniversary. Subscribe now for the real story behind the split, only in PEOPLE. Brad Pitt did not strike his son Maddox during a heated mid-flight argument with Angelina Jolie last week, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Pitt is accused of being "verbally abusive" and getting "physical" with one of his children on the family's private plane last Wednesday, a source previously told PEOPLE. The L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services is investigating the 52-year-old...

After a year-and-a-half long voyage aboard the International Space Station, a group of fungi collected from Antarctica has proven its ability to withstand harsh, Mars-like conditions. More than half of the cells remained intact over the course of the 18-month study, providing new insight for the possibility of life on Mars. These fungal samples, along with lichens from Spain and Austria, have allowed European researchers to assess the survivability and stability of microscopic lifeforms on the red planet. The tiny fungi taken from Antarctica are typically found in the cracks of rocks in this dry, hostile region. Scientists took samples...

No, those are not cars darting along a busy highway. The glowing specks you're seeing in this video (http://bit.ly/110LTfm) are millions of nuclei flowing through the tube-like filaments, or hyphae, of a single fungus cell. The video was produced as part of a study by UCLA mathematician Marcus Roper's research group that was the first to measure and explain this dynamic movement of nuclei in the cells of a fungus. "It's complex, beautiful and so dynamic," said Roper, an assistant professor of mathematics and the lead author of two new studies that cast light on how cells ingeniously adapt to...

You can find all the porcini you want in your supermarket, but don't go looking for the mushroom's distant cousin, Spongiforma squarepantsii, because the newly discovered species can only be found in the rain forest of Borneo - so far. Dennis E. Desjardin, a world-roaming mycologist, has just identified, described and named the curious fungal blob that a team of colleagues brought to his laboratory at San Francisco State...

Tiny balls of fungus and feces may disprove the theory that a huge space rock exploded over North America about 12,900 years ago, triggering a thousand-year cold snap, according to a new study. The ancient temperature drop, called the Younger Dryas, has been well documented in the geologic record, including soil and ice core samples.The cool-down also coincides with the extinction of mammoths and other Ice Age mammals in North America, and it's thought to have spurred our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Middle East to adopt an agricultural lifestyle.But the theory that a comet or asteroid explosion is behind the...

Lightning makes mushrooms more plentiful, according to ongoing research that offers a solid scientific basis for Japanese farming lore. For generations, Japanese farmers have welcomed storms over their fields based on the belief that lightning strikes provoke plentiful harvests of mushrooms, which are staples of Japanese cuisine. Currently, mushroom demand is so high that dealers are increasingly turning to foreign suppliers. Japan imports about 50,000 tons of mushrooms a year, mainly from China and South Korea. As part of a four-year study, scientists in northern Japan have been bombarding a variety of mushrooms in lab-based garden plots with artificially induced...