Mushrooms are truly strange and fascinating – they can live anywhere, be poisonous or medicinal, and according to reports, turning plastic waste into edibles. And in more mushroom news, some groups of fungi can literally help make ice.
Recently Advances in science In the paper, the researchers describe a newly identified fungal protein that causes ice to form at temperatures as high as 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-2 degrees Celsius). This is obviously below the freezing point of water, but freezing in nature is not so simple. According to the paper, it takes energy to form the first tiny seed of ice — an ice nucleus — and ice forms very slowly at temperatures above -50 degrees Celsius (-46 degrees C).
However, we still get things like clouds – microscopic water droplets and ice crystals – thanks to ice nuclei. For the new study, the team traced a fungal gene associated with an ice-making protein to a distant bacterial ancestor millions of years ago, according to a report from Virginia Tech. statement. Importantly, the fungal protein molecule offers a non-toxic, more efficient alternative to current approaches for weather engineering, food production, or protection of cells and organs.
Natural ice makers
since back in 1974scientists knew that some types of bacteria act as ice nucleators – catalysts that accelerate the formation of ice crystals in nature. In 1990, researchers confirmed that some fungi are capable of doing so, study co-author Boris A. Vinatzer, an environmental scientist at Virginia Tech, explained in a statement.
But only with advances in DNA sequencing have scientists been able to study microbial genomes and the relevant genetic mechanisms. While researchers have made good progress in studying these mechanisms for bacteria, not much work has been done on the origin of ice nuclei in fungal species, the team explained. statement from Boise State University.
Finding the trigger
For the new study, the researchers studied common soil fungi Mortierellaceae A family they deduced from water and lichen samples collected during previous polar expeditions. DNA sequencing pointed the team to certain genes that closely resemble those found inside known bacterial ice cores—not unheard of, but rare nonetheless. To verify that they were on the right track, the researchers planted these proteins onto other yeast and bacteria, which actually demonstrated a previously unknown ability to form ice.
Even more remarkable, further analysis revealed that the fungus was not simply copying a bacterial ancestor. Instead, it “took the high-efficiency trait of bacteria and adapted it to its own physiological requirements,” the team said in a statement.
“It’s a little bit the same and yet different,” explained Rosemary Eufemio, lead author of the study and a biochemist at Boise State University. “Fungi use the same repetitive sequence architecture as bacteria for their ice-forming sites, but make them more soluble and stable, which probably benefits their ecological function.”
Miracle Mortierellaceae
The study has clear implications for climate science. First, the fungi sampled in this study are relatively common soil fungi, meaning we probably underestimate how much they contribute to ice formation in the atmosphere. According to the US, the mushrooms’ natural origin also makes them a non-toxic alternative to silver iodide, the main particle used for cloud seeding for the past 80 years. Government Accountability Office.
The team also finds that fungal ice cores drive “evolutionary innovation at the interface of biology and physics,” the paper says. Experiments revealed that fungi remain active at low concentrations and in harsh conditions. This could make them extremely useful for bioinspired freezing technologies and engineered water modifications, Vinatzer said, “unlike bacteria, where you would have to add whole bacterial cells.”
“Now that we know this mushroom molecule, it will be easier to find out how many of these types of molecules are in the cloud,” Vinatzer said. “And in the long run, this research could contribute to the development of better climate models.”
