Exploring the Future of Plagues and Lifesavers with Fungi
This blog explores the potential of fungi to predict the future of plagues and lifesavers. It explains what endophytes are and how they can be used to create mixtures in a liquid medium. Learn more about this unusual bubble tea and its implications for the future.
Kew Science
🌍🌿🍄 Understanding and protecting plants and fungi for the well-being of people and the future of all life on Earth #OurFutureIsBotanic
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This unusual bubble tea can help predict the future of tomorrow's plagues and lifesavers 🦠
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
How? Let's take a look 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/XKxBywxu9w -
Ok, it's not actually bubble tea - do NOT drink it under any circumstances!
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
The mixtures you're seeing are isolated species of fungi growing in a liquid medium, after being transferred from a long stint in a petri dish 🧪 pic.twitter.com/vYuTeyXTxw -
Why grow it this way? Well we need a lot of it.
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
This is all part of a genome sequencing effort to better understand some species of fungi that, until recently, almost nothing was known about...
Fungal endophytes 🍄🍃 pic.twitter.com/2rb6ndnryP -
🍄Endophytes🍄
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
Endo = in
Phyte = plant
These are fungi that make their home inside plants.
Most of them go about their lives unnoticed. Some however may cause disastrous disease, while others may benefit the host plant - aiding faster growth or increasing resilience. pic.twitter.com/8WQw5ScfAY -
Crucially, the relationships between plants and fungi can shift between friend and foe over time.
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
Understanding the genes involved allows us to predict the tendencies of individual species. Using our bubble tea mix, we're able to build these fungal endophyte genomes! pic.twitter.com/JTTI5hBy3h -
This research - by Dr @RowenaCHill, one of the latest Kew PhD graduates - is a step towards being able to identify the major plant diseases of tomorrow, as well as species that could transform our future for the better 🔍
— Kew Science (@KewScience) June 9, 2023
Full story👇https://t.co/uqzxOSFKsJ pic.twitter.com/zDgUqLHNz7