Fungus
31 fungus organisms and their business parallels
Aspergillus niger
Aspergillus niger has been engineered and optimized for industrial production to a degree rivaling any microorganism. This common black mold produces...
Baker's Yeast
Baker's yeast proves that the molecular machinery of aging is ancient - conserved across a billion years of evolution separating yeast from humans. Re...
Beauveria bassiana
Beauveria bassiana kills insects without the elaborate behavioral manipulation of Ophiocordyceps or Massospora. This generalist pathogen infects over...
Candida albicans
Candida albicans demonstrates that the stress-response machinery studied in Saccharomyces cerevisiae for longevity has been repurposed for pathogenesi...
Cordyceps militaris
Cordyceps militaris has become the domesticated alternative to wild Ophiocordyceps sinensis, the famous caterpillar fungus of Tibetan traditional medi...
Cryptococcus neoformans
Cryptococcus neoformans links environmental stress resistance to human pathogenicity in ways that illuminate aging biology. This yeast survives in soi...
Ectomycorrhizal Fungi
Fungi that form symbiotic partnerships with tree roots, creating a direct nutrient pipeline from dead organic matter to living plants. They extend hyp...
Entomophthora muscae
Entomophthora muscae transforms house flies into zombies through behavioral manipulation convergently evolved from Ophiocordyceps but using different...
Escovopsis Parasite
Escovopsis is the plague that haunts leafcutter agriculture. This parasitic fungus attacks the Leucoagaricus cultivar that leafcutters depend upon, sp...
Fungal Cultivar
The fungi cultivated by leaf-cutter ants exist only in ant colonies - they cannot survive independently. They convert plant material brought by ants i...
Fungi / Mycorrhizal Networks
The largest living organism on Earth isn't a whale or a giant sequoia - it's a honey fungus in Oregon covering 2,385 acres, weighing 600 tons, and liv...
Hirsutella thompsonii
Hirsutella thompsonii exemplifies targeted biocontrol: a fungal pathogen specific to eriophyid mites that damage citrus crops. Unlike broad-spectrum e...
Honey Fungus
A single honey fungus in Oregon's Blue Mountains spans 2,385 acres - nearly 4 square miles - making it potentially the largest living organism on Eart...
Kluyveromyces lactis
Kluyveromyces lactis provides a metabolic counterpoint to Saccharomyces cerevisiae that illuminates connections between energy production and aging. S...
Leafcutter Cultivar Fungus
Leucoagaricus gongylophorus is the crop that built leafcutter civilization. This fungus has been cultivated by leafcutter ants for approximately 50 mi...
Massospora cicadina
Massospora cicadina achieves behavioral manipulation through chemistry rather than physical infection of control systems. This fungus infects periodic...
Metarhizium anisopliae
Metarhizium anisopliae appears to be a single generalist species but actually comprises specialized strains adapted to different hosts and environment...
Mycelium / Mycorrhizal Fungi
Dig up a handful of forest soil and you're holding 100 miles of fungal filament. Threads ten times thinner than human hair form mycorrhizal networks -...
Mycorrhizal Fungi
Mycorrhizal fungi are the internet that plants forgot to mention they need. These microscopic threads colonize over 90% of plant species' roots, tradi...
Mycorrhizal Networks
Mycorrhizal networks extend fractal architecture beyond individual plants: fungal hyphae form branching networks connecting roots of multiple plants (...
Neurospora crassa
Neurospora crassa pioneered modern genetics with Beadle and Tatum's one-gene-one-enzyme hypothesis and continues contributing to aging research throug...
Ophiocordyceps sinensis
Ophiocordyceps sinensis—yartsa gunbu in Tibetan—commands astronomical prices as traditional medicine, sometimes exceeding gold per weight. The fungus...
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis
Ophiocordyceps unilateralis has become synonymous with the 'zombie ant' phenomenon, though it actually represents a species complex with many host-spe...
Pandora formicae
Pandora formicae brings zombie-ant behavior to temperate forests, manipulating wood ants (Formica) much as Ophiocordyceps manipulates tropical carpent...
Penicillium chrysogenum
Penicillium chrysogenum produces penicillin—the antibiotic that launched the antibiotic era. While Alexander Fleming's original discovery was from P....
Podospora anserina
Podospora anserina ages and dies with programmed regularity—a defined lifespan that made it an early model for fungal senescence. Unlike S. cerevisiae...
Radiotrophic Fungi
In 1991, scientists discovered something that should not have existed: fungi growing inside the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Not just surviving the radi...
Schizosaccharomyces pombe
Schizosaccharomyces pombe—fission yeast—provides a crucial evolutionary counterpoint to Saccharomyces cerevisiae for understanding aging. These two ye...
Tolypocladium inflatum
Tolypocladium inflatum transformed medicine through a molecule it produces for fungal purposes: cyclosporine. This insect-pathogenic fungus was being...
White-Rot Fungi
Fungi that produce ligninase enzymes capable of breaking down lignin - one of nature's most recalcitrant polymers. Without white-rot fungi, dead trees...
Yarrowia lipolytica
Yarrowia lipolytica accumulates lipids to extraordinary levels—up to 50% of cell dry weight—when nitrogen becomes limiting while carbon remains availa...