4 ms·
FYI: Mushrooms are effectively animals who decided to digest things on the outside of their organism instead of the inside. That was the main evolutionary diver
by canadiantim 4y ago
FYI: Mushrooms are effectively animals who decided to digest things on the outside of their organism instead of the inside. That was the main evolutionary divergence between animals and fungi (who are more related to eachother than fungi are to plants). So we animals evolved a gastrointestinal tract running through the inside of our body; whereas, fungi/mushrooms evolved to exude digestive enzymes into the external environment and then reabsorb the digested products.
- gumby 4y ago> So we animals evolved a gastrointestinal tract running through the inside of our body; whereas, fungi/mushrooms evolved to exude digestive enzymes into the external environment and then reabsorb the digested products. And then some animals, including humans, extended their "internal" digestion process to include, in some cases, external processing from removing husks to, yes, enzymatic pre-processing before consumption. I love how messy "life" is. I wonder how far "back" the use of symbiotic creatures in digestion goes. We certainly can't survive without them. I believe some coral and even simpler organisms have a similar dependency.
- jrumbut 4y agoIsn't symbiotic metabolism a hypothesis for how cells ended up with mitochondria?
- gumby 4y agoNot just mitochondria, but cilia, flagella and other organelles
- tambourine_man 4y agoChloroplasts as well
- asveikau 4y agoI don't consider myself knowledgeable about biology, but it strikes me that even this omits the nominally distinct fauna in our guts. I say nominally distinct because from a philosophical standpoint it makes a point about where "we" end and "other" begins. Our microbiome consists of distinct organisms but it is also kind of "us".
- gumby 4y agoI was referring the microbiome of the gut. But it’s true that process extends to extracorporal digestion, so I wasn’t clear. I meant to be clear that I believe coral have symbiotic micro biomes for digestion as well, but I might be misremembering. > it makes a point about where "we" end and "other" begins. Due to illness, last year I had a major course of antibiotics, and after that I repopulated my gut by eating joghurt, not taking “probiotic” capsules. My diet has changed. This has made me wonder who wanted that doughnut: me, or some fellow traveler in my gut.
- tambourine_man 4y agoCooking, fermenting, slicing, indeed we externalized our digestion far and wide.