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I'm surprised that a mushroom adapted to growing in dirt was able to grow in human blood - I was under the impression that the growing medium matters quite a lo

I'm surprised that a mushroom adapted to growing in dirt was able to grow in human blood - I was under the impression that the growing medium matters quite a lot to mushrooms, and dead plant matter vs living animal matter seems like a big difference.

cogman10 6y ago
Depends on the fungus. Some are far more picky than others. Magic mushrooms, in particular, love cow dung as a growing medium. That being said, fungus tends to be nigh indestructible. The guy boiled it before injection which really speaks to just how hardy those spores can be.
- sonotmyname 6y ago
  > The guy boiled it before injection No, he poured boiling water over the mushrooms - big difference. Plenty of time for boiling water to cool before killing all of the spores.
- Alex3917 6y ago
  > Magic mushrooms, in particular, love cow dung as a growing medium. This is a myth. Most magic mushrooms grow in wood, moss, dirt, etc. The media just likes hyping up p. cubensis first whatever reason.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    "Magic Mushrooms" is ambiguous, so yeah, anything around it is a myth. When it comes to Cubensis, it's commonly found in the places you mention. I think the "myth" you mention, is about Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata) which you can find basically anywhere in the northern hemisphere, very common all over Europe. While Liberty Caps don't directly grow in the dung, they do love cow and sheep pastures and is more commonly found there. If you're an adult, never experienced psychedelic drugs before but would like to, and live in Europe, try looking for Liberty Caps in a nearby pasture once temperatures went down to between 0-10 degrees. I'm sure you'll find some.
    - Taniwha 6y ago
      be very very careful, there is a aphorism: "there are old mycologists and bold mycologists, but no old bold mycologists"
      - capableweb 6y ago
        Not sure that's true, some adventurers get old, some don't. Boldness has nothing to do with it. Shulgin, Leary and others reach high age, still bold people.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  You say cow dung as if you think that rich, picky concoction of nutrients (vegetation processed by a ruminant animal and then shat onto the ground) is an example of it being the opposite of picky.
Scoundreller 6y ago
The blood should be fairly sterile, so one of the hardest parts is already taken care of. Sheep and horse blood are used as growth media all the time. Not sure about this fungus though. Though you’d think the body would be able to fight this off.
- curryst 6y ago
  That's the surprising part to me. I'm not shocked mushrooms would grow in blood. Their air needs are pretty low, and might be solved by the ambient level in blood. Afaik the light is primarily to signal time of year to the mushrooms, they don't photosynthesize. I am surprised the body didn't kill the spores off though. I'm very curious what portion of his symptoms were from the spores directly, and what portion were from the body's immune reaction going absolutely crazy. If the symptoms are from the mushrooms and not from an immune response, that seems medically interesting. It might have applications in drug delivery systems, and in a long shot, maybe things like synthetic organs. Keeping the body's immune system from killing itself seems like a major hurdle to that.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Doesn’t have to be spores germinating. Could very well be a living fungal cell that had the conditions to replicate.
Symmetry 6y ago
Lots of fungi and bacteria that aren't human pathogens can nonetheless infect us if they somehow get past our skin. Since they haven't evolved an equilibrium to maximize spread these are some of the deadliest diseases out there - or were until we learned to control them with drugs. https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accident-than-assassination https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid... We tend to think of the adaptive immune system, antibodies and such, as what protects us from disease. But it isn't nearly important as the automatic immune system that quickly dispatches most potential pathogens that find their way into our body without any period of learning. And that isn't as important as the barriers like skin and mucus that prevent all the critters of the world from getting into us in the first place.
dathinab 6y ago
It's not as unusual as it seems. Fungi being more likely to grow in humans are one of the underestimated consequences of climate change which we might run into in the future.
- jasonshaev 6y ago
  Can you expand on this "Fungi being more likely to grow in humans are one of the underestimated consequences of climate change which we might run into in the future." ? Why would climate change lead to more Fungal growth in humans? Genuine question
  - dathinab 6y ago
    I did a small bit of research into this but it was pretty long ago so the details are a bit vague but if I remember correctly it was mainly due to 2 factors: - Fungi often don't parasite humans as we are "to warm" (and many other reasons) but with increasing warmer weather fungi will likely adapt to it and in turn become humans become increasingly closer to be "an interesting habitat" - Changes in weather changing how fungi grow and where they grow making it more likely for existing problematic fungi to come in contact with humans. Take all of this with a grain of salt it was quite a while ago that I read about it and I mainly remembered the conclusion. But there had been cases where due to (likely) climate change induced changes in weather fungi started infecting humans, it was either in the US or Australia. So sorry again not much useful information. I guess it might have been better to not post this without trying to find the articles/dokus I had read/seen about it given that I don't remember to many details besides the conclusion I had. (EDIT: Try searching "warmer weather fungi humans" at least on duckduckgo this yielded some articles about this which are not the sources I had read and I still have to read and evaluate them, but might find some useful information)
code_duck 6y ago
The most common cultivation medium for psilocybin mushrooms is brown rice powder mixed with vermiculite. I wonder how that matches up in terms of pH and nutrients.

cogman10 6y ago

Depends on the fungus. Some are far more picky than others. Magic mushrooms, in particular, love cow dung as a growing medium. That being said, fungus tends to be nigh indestructible. The guy boiled it before injection which really speaks to just how hardy those spores can be.

sonotmyname 6y ago
> The guy boiled it before injection No, he poured boiling water over the mushrooms - big difference. Plenty of time for boiling water to cool before killing all of the spores.
Alex3917 6y ago
> Magic mushrooms, in particular, love cow dung as a growing medium. This is a myth. Most magic mushrooms grow in wood, moss, dirt, etc. The media just likes hyping up p. cubensis first whatever reason.
- capableweb 6y ago
  "Magic Mushrooms" is ambiguous, so yeah, anything around it is a myth. When it comes to Cubensis, it's commonly found in the places you mention. I think the "myth" you mention, is about Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata) which you can find basically anywhere in the northern hemisphere, very common all over Europe. While Liberty Caps don't directly grow in the dung, they do love cow and sheep pastures and is more commonly found there. If you're an adult, never experienced psychedelic drugs before but would like to, and live in Europe, try looking for Liberty Caps in a nearby pasture once temperatures went down to between 0-10 degrees. I'm sure you'll find some.
  - Taniwha 6y ago
    be very very careful, there is a aphorism: "there are old mycologists and bold mycologists, but no old bold mycologists"
    - capableweb 6y ago
      Not sure that's true, some adventurers get old, some don't. Boldness has nothing to do with it. Shulgin, Leary and others reach high age, still bold people.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
You say cow dung as if you think that rich, picky concoction of nutrients (vegetation processed by a ruminant animal and then shat onto the ground) is an example of it being the opposite of picky.

Scoundreller 6y ago

The blood should be fairly sterile, so one of the hardest parts is already taken care of. Sheep and horse blood are used as growth media all the time. Not sure about this fungus though. Though you’d think the body would be able to fight this off.

curryst 6y ago
That's the surprising part to me. I'm not shocked mushrooms would grow in blood. Their air needs are pretty low, and might be solved by the ambient level in blood. Afaik the light is primarily to signal time of year to the mushrooms, they don't photosynthesize. I am surprised the body didn't kill the spores off though. I'm very curious what portion of his symptoms were from the spores directly, and what portion were from the body's immune reaction going absolutely crazy. If the symptoms are from the mushrooms and not from an immune response, that seems medically interesting. It might have applications in drug delivery systems, and in a long shot, maybe things like synthetic organs. Keeping the body's immune system from killing itself seems like a major hurdle to that.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Doesn’t have to be spores germinating. Could very well be a living fungal cell that had the conditions to replicate.

Symmetry 6y ago

Lots of fungi and bacteria that aren't human pathogens can nonetheless infect us if they somehow get past our skin. Since they haven't evolved an equilibrium to maximize spread these are some of the deadliest diseases out there - or were until we learned to control them with drugs. https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accident-than-assassination https://aeon.co/essays/when-bacteria-kill-us-it-s-more-accid... We tend to think of the adaptive immune system, antibodies and such, as what protects us from disease. But it isn't nearly important as the automatic immune system that quickly dispatches most potential pathogens that find their way into our body without any period of learning. And that isn't as important as the barriers like skin and mucus that prevent all the critters of the world from getting into us in the first place.

dathinab 6y ago

It's not as unusual as it seems. Fungi being more likely to grow in humans are one of the underestimated consequences of climate change which we might run into in the future.

jasonshaev 6y ago
Can you expand on this "Fungi being more likely to grow in humans are one of the underestimated consequences of climate change which we might run into in the future." ? Why would climate change lead to more Fungal growth in humans? Genuine question
- dathinab 6y ago
  I did a small bit of research into this but it was pretty long ago so the details are a bit vague but if I remember correctly it was mainly due to 2 factors: - Fungi often don't parasite humans as we are "to warm" (and many other reasons) but with increasing warmer weather fungi will likely adapt to it and in turn become humans become increasingly closer to be "an interesting habitat" - Changes in weather changing how fungi grow and where they grow making it more likely for existing problematic fungi to come in contact with humans. Take all of this with a grain of salt it was quite a while ago that I read about it and I mainly remembered the conclusion. But there had been cases where due to (likely) climate change induced changes in weather fungi started infecting humans, it was either in the US or Australia. So sorry again not much useful information. I guess it might have been better to not post this without trying to find the articles/dokus I had read/seen about it given that I don't remember to many details besides the conclusion I had. (EDIT: Try searching "warmer weather fungi humans" at least on duckduckgo this yielded some articles about this which are not the sources I had read and I still have to read and evaluate them, but might find some useful information)

code_duck 6y ago

The most common cultivation medium for psilocybin mushrooms is brown rice powder mixed with vermiculite. I wonder how that matches up in terms of pH and nutrients.