Fungus News

December 9, 2025

Top Headlines

Small Root Mutation Could Make Crops Fertilize Themselves

Dec. 9, 2025 Scientists discovered a small protein region that determines whether plants reject or welcome nitrogen-fixing bacteria. By tweaking only two amino acids, they converted a defensive receptor into one that supports symbiosis. Early success in barley ...

New Research Reveals the Hidden Organism Behind Lake Erie’s Toxic Blooms

Dec. 2, 2025 Dolichospermum, a type of cyanobacteria thriving in Lake Erie’s warming waters, has been identified as the surprising culprit behind the lake’s dangerous saxitoxins—some of the most potent natural neurotoxins known. Using advanced genome ...

CRISPR Wheat That Makes Its Own Fertilizer

Nov. 24, 2025 UC Davis researchers engineered wheat that encourages soil bacteria to convert atmospheric nitrogen into plant-usable fertilizer. By boosting a natural compound in the plant, the wheat triggers bacteria to form biofilms that enable nitrogen ...

This Engineered Fungus Cuts Emissions and Tastes Like Meat

Nov. 21, 2025 Scientists used CRISPR to boost the efficiency and digestibility of a fungus already known for its meatlike qualities. The modified strain grows protein far more quickly and with much less sugar while producing substantially fewer emissions. It also ...

Scientists Finally Discover What’s Fueling Massive Sargassum Blooms

Nov. 19, 2025 Massive Sargassum blooms sweeping across the Caribbean and Atlantic are fueled by a powerful nutrient partnership: phosphorus pulled to the surface by equatorial upwelling and nitrogen supplied by cyanobacteria living directly on the drifting algae. ...

Scientists Shocked to Find E. Coli Spreads as Fast as the Swine Flu

Nov. 4, 2025 Researchers have, for the first time, estimated how quickly E. coli bacteria can spread between people — and one strain moves as fast as swine flu. Using genomic data from the UK and Norway, scientists modeled bacterial transmission rates and ...

Soil Microbes Remember Drought and Help Plants Survive

Nov. 2, 2025 Researchers discovered that soil microbes in Kansas carry drought “memories” that affect how plants grow and survive. Native plants showed stronger responses to these microbial legacies than crops like corn, hinting at co-evolution over time. ...

Scientists Turn Flower Fragrance Into a Mosquito Killer

Oct. 27, 2025 A team of researchers has developed a floral-scented fungus that tricks mosquitoes into approaching and dying. The fungus emits longifolene, a natural scent that irresistibly draws them in. It’s harmless to humans, inexpensive to produce, and ...

Scientists Discover Orchids Sprouting from Decaying Wood

Oct. 8, 2025 Kobe University researchers found that orchids rely on wood-decaying fungi to germinate, feeding on the carbon from rotting logs. Their seedlings only grow near deadwood, forming precise fungal partnerships that mirror those seen in adult orchids ...

The Billion-year Reign of Fungi That Predated Plants and Made Earth Livable

Oct. 1, 2025 Fungi may have shaped Earth’s landscapes long before plants appeared. By combining rare gene transfers with fossil evidence, researchers have traced fungal origins back nearly a billion years earlier than expected. These ancient fungi may have ...

Miscarriages, Down Syndrome, and Infertility All Linked to This Hidden DNA Process

Sep. 28, 2025 Human fertility hinges on a delicate molecular ballet that begins even before birth. UC Davis researchers have uncovered how special protein networks safeguard chromosomes as eggs and sperm form, ...

A Tiny Mineral May Hold the Secret to Feeding Billions Sustainably

Sep. 24, 2025 Rice, a staple for billions, is one of the most resource-hungry crops on the planet—but scientists may have found a way to change that. By applying nanoscale selenium directly to rice plants, researchers dramatically improved nitrogen efficiency, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:29pm EST

A Strange Ancient Foot Reveals a Hidden Human Cousin

Nov. 28, 2025 Researchers have finally assigned a strange 3.4-million-year-old foot to Australopithecus deyiremeda, confirming that Lucy’s species wasn’t alone in ancient Ethiopia. This hominin had an ...

This Tiny Plant Survived the Vacuum of Space and Still Grows

Nov. 24, 2025 Moss spores survived an extended stay on the outside of the ISS and remained capable of germinating once back on Earth. Their resilience to vacuum, extreme temperatures, and UV radiation surprised ...

Scientists Stunned as Island Spider Loses Half Its Genome

Nov. 2, 2025 On the Canary Islands, scientists discovered that the spider Dysdera tilosensis has halved its genome size in just a few million years—defying traditional evolutionary theories that predict larger, ...

Before Plants or Animals, Fungi Conquered Earth’s Surface

Oct. 28, 2025 Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, ...

Living Computers Powered by Mushrooms

Oct. 26, 2025 Scientists have found that mushrooms can act as organic memory devices, mimicking neural activity while consuming minimal power. The Ohio State team grew and trained shiitake fungi to perform like ...

MIT Scientists Discover Hidden 3D Genome Loops That Survive Cell Division

Oct. 24, 2025 MIT researchers discovered that the genome’s 3D structure doesn’t vanish during cell division as previously thought. Instead, tiny loops called microcompartments remain (and even strengthen) ...

Scientists Just Found Rare Spores Inside a Fossil Older Than Dinosaurs

Sep. 27, 2025 Scientists reclassified a long-misunderstood fossil from Brazil as a new genus, Franscinella riograndensis. Using advanced microscopy, they discovered spores preserved in situ—a rare find that ...

Mushrooms Evolved Psychedelics Twice, Baffling Scientists

Sep. 24, 2025 Researchers found that magic mushrooms and fiber caps independently evolved different biochemical pathways to create psilocybin. This convergence shows nature’s ingenuity, but the reason why ...

Hidden for 125 Years, a Welsh Fossil Turns out to Be a Dinosaur

Sep. 22, 2025 More than a century after its discovery, a mysterious fossil from South Wales has finally been confirmed as belonging to a new species of predatory dinosaur. Using cutting-edge digital scanning, ...

Soil Warming Experiments Challenge Assumptions About Climate Change

Sep. 17, 2025 Heating alone won’t drive soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide — they need added carbon and nutrients to thrive. This finding challenges assumptions about how climate warming influences ...

Salmon’s Secret Superfood Is Smaller Than a Grain of Salt

Sep. 8, 2025 Tiny diatoms and their bacterial partners act as nature’s nutrient factories, fueling insects and salmon in California’s Eel River. Their pollution-free process could inspire breakthroughs in ...

Scientists Found the Missing Nutrients Bees Need — Colonies Grew 15-Fold

Aug. 23, 2025 Scientists have developed a breakthrough food supplement that could help save honeybees from devastating declines. By engineering yeast to produce six essential sterols found in pollen, researchers ...

Scientists Unlock the Gene That Lets Bearded Dragons Switch Sex

Aug. 20, 2025 Two independent research teams have unveiled near-complete reference genomes of the central bearded dragon, a reptile with the rare ability to change sex depending on both chromosomes and nest ...

These Dogs Are Trained to Sniff out an Invasive Insect—and They're Shockingly Good at It

July 17, 2025 Dogs trained by everyday pet owners are proving to be surprisingly powerful allies in the fight against the invasive spotted lanternfly. In a groundbreaking study, citizen scientists taught their ...

How a Lost Gene Gave the Sea Spider Its Bizarre, Leggy Body

July 7, 2025 Scientists have decoded the sea spider’s genome for the first time, revealing how its strangely shaped body—with organs in its legs and barely any abdomen—may be tied to a missing gene. The ...

These 545-Million-Year-Old Fossil Trails Just Rewrote the Story of Evolution

June 27, 2025 A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions of years earlier than we thought. By analyzing ...

Mojave Lichen Defies Death Rays—could Life Thrive on Distant Exoplanets?

June 24, 2025 Lichen from the Mojave Desert has stunned scientists by surviving months of lethal UVC radiation, suggesting life could exist on distant planets orbiting volatile stars. The secret? A microscopic ...

From Cursed Tomb Fungus to Cancer Cure: Aspergillus Flavus Yields Potent New Drug

June 23, 2025 In a remarkable twist of science, researchers have transformed a fungus long associated with death into a potential weapon against cancer. Found in tombs like that of King Tut, Aspergillus flavus was ...

Defying Darwin: Scientists Discover Worms Rewrote Their DNA to Survive on Land

June 18, 2025 New research is shaking up our understanding of evolution by revealing that some species may not evolve gradually at all. Instead, scientists discovered that certain marine worms experienced an ...

83% of Earth’s Climate-Critical Fungi Are Still Unknown

June 15, 2025 Underground fungi may be one of Earth s most powerful and overlooked allies in the fight against climate change, yet most of them remain unknown to science. Known only by DNA, these "dark ...

160 Million Years Ago, This Fungus Pierced Trees Like a Microscopic Spear

June 8, 2025 In a paper published in National Science Review, a Chinese team of scientists highlights the discovery of well-preserved blue-stain fungal hyphae within a Jurassic fossil wood from northeastern ...

Nitrogen Loss on Sandy Shores: The Big Impact of Tiny Anoxic Pockets

June 2, 2025 Some microbes living on sand grains use up all the oxygen around them. Their neighbors, left without oxygen, make the best of it: They use nitrate in the surrounding water for denitrification -- a ...

Student Discovers Long-Awaited Mystery Fungus Sought by LSD's Inventor

June 2, 2025 Making a discovery with the potential for innovative applications in pharmaceutical development, a microbiology student has found a long sought-after fungus that produces effects similar to the ...

Scientists Find a New Way to Help Plants Fight Diseases

May 30, 2025 Laboratory could improve crop resilience In a discovery three decades in the making, scientists have acquired detailed knowledge about the internal structures and mode of regulation for a specialized ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope ...

Yeast Can Now Produce Human DNase1

May 28, 2025 The protein DNase1 is one of the oldest biological agents in history: It has been on the market since 1958 and is now used, among other things, to treat cystic fibrosis. However, it takes ...

Nordic Studies Show the Significance of Old-Growth Forests for Biodiversity

May 27, 2025 Researchers conducted a systematic review of 99 scientific publications that compared the flora or fauna of old-growth forests, managed forests and clearcut sites in boreal Europe. The reviewed ...

Modulation of Antiviral Response in Fungi Via RNA Editing

May 23, 2025 The molecular pathways involved in antiviral defenses and counter-defenses in host-pathogen systems remain unclear. Researchers have used Neurospora crassa as a model organism to explore how RNA ...

'Selfish' Genes Called Introners Proven to Be a Major Source of Genetic Complexity

May 22, 2025 A new study proves that a type of genetic element called 'introners' are the mechanism by which many introns spread within and between species, also providing evidence of eight instances in ...

Yeast Reveals How Species Adapt to a Warmer Climate

May 21, 2025 How do organisms adapt to climate change? A new study reveals the complex interplay between genetic diversity and temperature tolerance ...