1072
Mushrooms (mander.xyz)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 155 points 1 week ago

The part about them being too closely related to Humans sounds like BS, but there is a mushroom that is perfectly safe the first few times you eat it, and then eventually makes your immune system attack your blood cells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paxillus_involutus

[-] Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 50 points 1 week ago

There's a Paul Stamets video where he talks about how mushrooms are so closely related to humans that we both fight off similar pathogens and that is why they are so useful to us for medicine (penicillin for example.)

[-] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 42 points 1 week ago

In the Paul Stamets TED talk, he never says that humans specifically are genetically close to fungi. He said that between all the different kingdoms of life, animals and fungi were more biologically similar than any other two kingdoms.

That definitely explains why we can borrow useful defenses from fungi, like antibiotics, but it's definitely not a reason to believe that our immune systems would have any difficulties differentiating between certain fungi and our own bodies, at least not for reasons related to direct genetic similarities.

[-] Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 9 points 1 week ago

You're right, my word choice makes it seem like I was saying fungi and humans are genetically related. Thanks for clarifying.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
1072 points (98.9% liked)

Science Memes

11047 readers
3079 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS