this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 163 points 9 months ago (1 children)

one passage I read warned that anyone who got too deep into studying mushrooms very quickly started to sound like they had gone off the deep end …

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can confirm. I've been curious about mushrooms for years and joined a mushroom pick. There's another guy who is normal like me. But everyone else, I'm 90% sure are forest druids and like a slow zombie bite, I'm already seeing myself become a crazy kook.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Can you provide an example with a mushroom rambling or similar level ramble?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 126 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This is the sort of thing the cranky old wizard says to the hero before inevitably teaching them about mushrooms so they can go on a magical adventure

[–] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Mushrooms took me on a magical adventure where I met a wizard.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I used to be a wizard, till I took a mushroom to the knee.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

My best trip had three things appear in the branches of the trees I was sitting under: A wizard, Bob Marley, and Optimus Prime.

It felt like a combination that could guard me against literally anything.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Is this professor Paul Stamets?

[–] [email protected] 68 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You mean The Professor Paul Stamets, who wears a big hat that is one big mushroom? The one with a species of mushroom named after him? The one with honorifics in warp speed pop culture, and those who feed lemmings memes?

Cuz he's a cool dude.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

The coolest. (That's a pretty big list, but still barely scratches the surface!)

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Just give me the mushrooms that'll make me see the curvature of the universe fam

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My mushrooms are too strong for you, traveller

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (2 children)

But I am going into BATTLE >:(

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

3 grams of Penis Envy will put you on the right direction

[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Is there really a mushroom that will make your body irritated because it's so similar?

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, I'm not a mycologist, so someone with more expertise feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure that's BS.

[–] [email protected] 110 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

The concept of a mushroom being generally similar to humans is total horseshit. What they're probably referencing is a mushroom with some signaling protein (or saccride or steroid or something) that is coincidentally similar some human equivalent and your immune system (for some reason) freaks out about it when you eat it. Then, as is referenced, the response to the mushroom happens to also be able to target some of your own cells, and now you've got an autoimmune disorder.

That behavior is not normal for your immune system to do, by the way, otherwise cannibals would all die from allergic reactions to their unfortunate meals. But, the immune system is complicated, so shit happens sometimes.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think that they are referring to Paxillus involotus

It is quite an interesting mushroom. It was considered "safe to eat" for a long time, but it contains an antigen that a human's immune system can learn to attack.

The antigen is still of unknown structure but it stimulates the formation of IgG antibodies in the blood serum.

I once looked into whether this immune response builds up over many exposures, or if it is a random event that has a probability of happening for each exposure. I don't remember finding a convincing answer... If it is a random event, then mushroom could be considered a "Russian roulette" mushroom that will usually provide a nice meal, but, if unlucky, you may experience the following:

Poisoning symptoms are rapid in onset, consisting initially of vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and associated decreased blood volume. Shortly after these initial symptoms appear, hemolysis develops, resulting in reduced urine output, hemoglobin in the urine or outright absence of urine formation, and anemia. Hemolysis may lead to numerous complications including acute kidney injury, shock, acute respiratory failure, and disseminated intravascular coagulation. These complications can cause significant morbidity with fatalities having been reported.

I agree with you that this is probably unrelated to the "generally similar to humans" comment. I feel like this fantasy is a combination of the above fact mixed in with the fact that the Fungi belong to the Opisthokonts, which places them closer to animals than plants, and so they share some interesting cellular characteristics with us. This places them closer to animals than plants, but "generally similar to humans" is perhaps a bit of a stretch ^_^

But, it is just a meme about a guy being hyped about mushrooms. Hopefully people don't expect memes to be super accurate 😁

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There are fungal infections that cannot be treated as there are no good targets for fungicides that don't also affect humans

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I always liked the theory that fungi are actually aliens that came from some asteroid from another planet and have just been around long enough that nobody bats an eye at them anymore. I mean, look at slime mold and tell me that not basically Venom!

[–] [email protected] 44 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Slime mold is a protist not fungi :0. I'm just being a jerk here doesn't matter lol. I love the slime molds they're so cool I always liked having them in the lab each year as a teaching tool. Definitely venom

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Correcting phylogenical errors is never being a jerk.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's just nit picking but I put in here because it's somewhat interesting that it isn't. I try not to be the well ACKSHULLY guy haha

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I mean it isn't exactly nitpicking, is it? Sure, we don't tend to care that much about protists vs algae vs bacteria vs anything else that is tiny in common parlance, but these things are all VERY different from each other, aren't they? Like, different kingdoms different? I mean, if someone ran around saying that rabbits were a form of reptile I wouldn't think you were nitpicking for correcting them as being a mammal.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Isn't there some conspiracy theory about how mushrooms secretly rule the world?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No. Stop asking questions.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Sincerely, the mushrooms.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

For some reason, I now have the urge to bury you in wet shady soil.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

Immortal mushrooms? Like some quill does? Googling it is spammed by "mushroom of immortality" because of some chinese legend. But may be the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So most fungi do have a lifespan, they have teleomere decay, and when you're cloning mushrooms (from propagating mycelia) you have to let them go to fruit (the part that looks like a mushroom) every now and then. It's a pain in the ass.

But like the other poster said, they play it fast and loose with which part you consider the "organism". My favorite thing is that they do cytosolic streaming. Genetics can be a pain on mushrooms because not only do they share nutrients and metabolic burden through mycelia, they can share nuclei.

One of the weird convienent realities we used extensively is that cells are big enough you can spread them over a petri dish with a little loop, and if you diluted the initial sample enough, the colonies that developed were, practically speaking, from one parent cell. So you could try to modify a bunch, and then plate them (spreading the cells around) and pick individual colonies that were all clones from a single parent. Fungi mycelia means the nucleus isn't stuck in one cell. It also means expression levels can be variable (some cells will have multiple nuclei, and then later maybe they don't).

Fungi are a godamn pain in the ass to study. They're not mysterious, they're not alien, they're just fucking assholes.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

Being a mycologist sounds a lot like being a mechanic who works on German cars

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

Based on the Wikipedia article on biological immortality referencing species that live for a couple hundred years and the Wikipedia page on armillaria ostoyae mentioning living specimens that are multiple millenia old (and thousands of acres large!), I'm guessing that may be what the prof is referring to?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

And you cannot kill them in a way that matters.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I have found that a mix of olive oil, butter, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper makes their deaths matter a lot.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

you fool. you've only removed the parts outside of the ground, it's mycelia still lives. it will be back in time.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I sincerely hope so! I'll be hungry for more by then!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

I've found that just tearing into their raw (but washed) flesh with my teeth works just as well, and imo is even tastier without all those distractions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why does the way I kill them have to matter?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (6 children)

You need to be able to credibly threaten them with death if you want to force them to tell you the name of God.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

#transcription

hyperactivehedgehog

I'm studying biotech and every time someone brings up mushrooms our current professor will look either extremely excited or pained and go "listen.. mushrooms are neither plants nor animals nor something in between. They elude all attempts to categorize them. We do not know what they are. Some are immortal. Some produce life-saving substances. Some are so closely related to humans that eating them may cause an allergic reaction against your own body. I cannot teach you about the mushrooms"

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

But you just did teach us about mushrooms. Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I like lychen. It's a symbiosis of moss and fungus.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i hate this post because it's completely inaccurate and ignorant of the science, i have to link something every time i see it, like this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/comments/yqmm0o/

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

They are the internet providers of the trees

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