The poison of mushrooms is actually "borrowed"?

When I talk about poisonous mushrooms, I think of my friends in Yunnan. Because reports of Yunnan people being poisoned by eating wild mushrooms are not uncommon. There are even many netizens who want to experience the wonderful feeling of seeing "little people" after being poisoned by wild mushrooms. ( Dangerous behavior, please do not try. )

Although wild mushrooms are delicious, you should not blindly pick them yourself. Some poisonous mushrooms look very similar to edible mushrooms, and if you don't have enough professional knowledge, you may mistake them.

If you pick non-toxic mushrooms, congratulations, you can try them. If you happen to pick poisonous mushrooms...

The purpose of mushrooms producing toxins is to ensure their own survival and reduce the possibility of being eaten by predators. In this way, the spores are protected from maturation and spread.

There are many kinds of mushrooms in nature, and of course there are many poisonous mushrooms. But did you know that not every kind of mushroom can produce toxins? It is not enough to have the ability to do so. It must be the "chosen one" in the mushroom world.

For example, most poisonous mushrooms are hidden in the three major families of Amanita , Capsules and Agaricus .

These three families have basically no "blood relationship" and belong to three different families in taxonomy. But what's interesting is that these three families of fungi can synthesize the same toxin: amatoxin .

This toxin is extremely toxic and can destroy the liver and kidneys of humans or animals within a few days. It can also cause the poisoned person to feel extreme pain while awake, until he falls into a coma or even dies.

Take the exclusive deadly weapon of the three families mentioned above, amatoxin, for example. Who would have thought that such a powerful weapon was actually "borrowed" from mushrooms.

The Fungal Lichen Diversity and Adaptive Evolution Team of the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that these mushrooms are not the original creators of amatoxin. The toxin was actually copied by them, which is what people often call a "copycat version."

This toxin was originally invented by an unknown ancestor. It happened to be noticed by these "chosen bacteria" that had been blessed. So they were smart enough to copy it with a trick of "Ctrl c + Ctrl v". (I want to learn it too!) How did they do it?

The answer is horizontal gene transfer . The mushrooms used horizontal gene transfer to directly copy the confidential file for synthesizing amatoxin - the gene.

Doesn't it sound very mysterious? The most common way of gene transmission we know is vertical gene inheritance or transfer from parents to children.

Horizontal gene transfer is a completely different form from the above. It is also called lateral gene transfer, which is the process of exchanging genetic material between different individuals. The two can be biological individuals of the same species but with different genetic information, or even completely unrelated individuals.

This method is common in bacteria. Some bacteria will actively attach to other bacteria and completely share genes with them. Different types of bacteria will also collect genes leaked from the surrounding area for their own use and pass them on to the next generation.

For example, the familiar E. coli can "directly" absorb foreign DNA in this way in the natural environment.

Some bacteria can take this method to an extreme. They are no longer satisfied with communicating among their own kind, but have extended their "hands" to animals, plants and even humans.

For example, the radioresistant Deinococcus contains several genes that are only found in plants; the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis also contains at least 8 genes from humans (the proteins encoded by these genes can effectively help themselves evade the host's defense system).

The completion of the human genome sequencing work further proves that horizontal gene transfer is more common than we thought. Because 223 genes in the human genome were found to be derived from bacteria. This was undoubtedly obtained through horizontal gene transfer.

Back to the mushrooms, they "stole" the results of others and skipped the evolutionary process of tens of thousands or even millions of years, easily possessing super weapons that did not belong to them.