Thelargest living thingon Earth is not a blue hulk or a giant redwood tree . rather , it is a specimen ofArmillariafungi that covers the country of a small city and weighs hundreds , or maybe thousands , of tonnes . When discover in the late 1980s this awful being was quickly dubbed the " humongous fungus " and attracted something of a furor following . Now we ’re starting to understand the genetics that appropriate it to get so big .
Armillariaare parasitical fungi . They can colonize more than 500 flora mintage , killing the host ’s solution and then scatter through the root tissue to shape jumbo underground body , which procreate through spore - grow honey mushrooms . They can also taint the lower trunks of tree diagram , make their way under the barque , and blocking the movement of water and nutrients , eventually pop even the mightiest wood giant .
A team led byDr György Siposof the University of Sopron , Hungary , sequence the genome of four of the numerousArmillariaspecies and compared them with genome from 22 related fungal species to see what allow these few to grow so big .
InNature Ecology and Evolution , Sipos and his co - author describe that theseArmillariahave unco declamatory genomes for waste fungi . Moreover , all of them , but particularlyA. ostoyae , the species from which the humungous fungus comes , are packed with genes that raise their capacity to infect Tree . These include cistron that produce enzymes for breaking down lignocellulose , grant a fungus to eat on away at the roots of the forest . These genes give their possessor access to dead wood before corrupting microbes can digest it , offering a vast militant vantage .
Armillariahavepreviously been shownto have variation charge per unit just about a thousand times lower than other filum - producing fungi . And why not ? When your cistron are this well suitable to allowing you to take over the public , why would you want to interchange them ?
Although the name humongous fungus has also been given to other Armillaria that are giants by local criterion , the original and biggest ( that we roll in the hay of ) is in the Malheur National Forest , Oregon . The giant has continued to grow since it was first identified and today stretches for almost10 square kilometers(4 square miles ) . Estimates of its weight vary from 550 tonnes ( 600 tons ) to several times this .
The forest servicing has had samples taken throughout the fungus ' range and DNA measurements confirm its status as a single living matter . From its rate of increase , the banging fungus is estimated to be at least 2,400 year previous . If this sounds terrifying , the good news is you may get your own back , because the mushrooms aresafe to eat , although view motley as to their palatability .
