maximus otter
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Oyster mushrooms release nerve gas to kill worms before eviscerating them
Oyster mushrooms violently attack and eat their prey. A study published January 18 in the journal Science Advances found that they use a nerve gas to poison and paralyze nematodes and then slurp out the insides.
What we think of as mushrooms are part of a fungus’s reproductive structure, also called a fruiting body. Oyster mushrooms are the spore-filled reproductive structures of a fungus called Pleurotus ostreatus. In 2020, study author Yen-Ping Hsueh and her team from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica found that P. ostreatus has a tiny, lollipop-shaped structure within the mushroom. When nematodes pass against the fungus, the lollipop structures break their heads open, releasing a highly toxic nerve gas, 3-octanone.
“They really paralyze the worms within a minute,” Hsueh [said] in an interview about the new study and her work with fungi. “It’s very dramatic.”
(One immediate development is that the oyster mushroom may not be considered a truly vegan food—because they eat nematodes.)
https://www.popsci.com/science/oyster-mushroom-nerve-gas/
maximus otter
Oyster mushrooms violently attack and eat their prey. A study published January 18 in the journal Science Advances found that they use a nerve gas to poison and paralyze nematodes and then slurp out the insides.
What we think of as mushrooms are part of a fungus’s reproductive structure, also called a fruiting body. Oyster mushrooms are the spore-filled reproductive structures of a fungus called Pleurotus ostreatus. In 2020, study author Yen-Ping Hsueh and her team from Taiwan’s Academia Sinica found that P. ostreatus has a tiny, lollipop-shaped structure within the mushroom. When nematodes pass against the fungus, the lollipop structures break their heads open, releasing a highly toxic nerve gas, 3-octanone.
“They really paralyze the worms within a minute,” Hsueh [said] in an interview about the new study and her work with fungi. “It’s very dramatic.”
(One immediate development is that the oyster mushroom may not be considered a truly vegan food—because they eat nematodes.)
https://www.popsci.com/science/oyster-mushroom-nerve-gas/
maximus otter