Dark Fungi

June 29, 2024 8:39 AM

The land, water and air around us are chock-full of DNA from fungi that scientists can’t identify. Like dark matter, these organisms are hidden, connected with no known species—or organism. It's not just fungi; microbial dark matter makes up as much as 99% of microorganisms currently can't be cultured and studied.

I'm reminded of the Barry Lopez quote from Arctic Dreams that I can't presently find about how landscapes always surpass our expectations of them.

posted by criticalyeast (17 comments total)

That's also true of your commensal and symbiotic microbiome. Only a small fraction of the microbes which inhabit our bodies have been isolated, cultured and characterized. And even in the human genome, so-called "junk" DNA vastly outweighs known exomes. An increasing share of this dark genome - to use your phrase - is recognized to code for the RNAs which regulate, modulate, and edit the genes and their transcripts. Still, the larger fraction is of unknown function.

It's simply the reflection of our profound ignorance about the world, to say nothing about the universe.
posted by sudogeek at 9:03 AM on June 29 [9 favorites]

So amazing. Also explains why air pollution is so bad
posted by eustatic at 9:37 AM on June 29

In 2011 a British microbiologist named Meredith Jones discovered a possible new phylum, aptly named Cryptomycota [nih], which was previously dark. (For reference, the class of mammals is a subgroup of the phylum Chordata.) Such discoveries are more than minor revisions to the tree of life. Besides adding an enormous branch on the fungal limb, Cryptomycota was a bombshell because it lacked the fibrous substance chitin, once considered a defining characteristic of all fungi. And since Rosling’s team made its discovery, Archaeorhizomycetes [frontiers] have been deemed potential keystone species. If they weren’t around—forming symbiotic relationships with plants, decomposing organic molecules into carbon and nitrogen that other organisms can utilize—whole ecosystems could collapse. awesome
posted by HearHere at 9:38 AM on June 29 [4 favorites]

one of the things I find really frustrating about the anti-science stance is that SCIENCE IS JUST SO FLIPPING COOL!!!! this is fascinating!! we live in this beautiful mysterious world and there are people out there pouring themselves into the work of discovering it, maybe even trying to understand it. this is really wild and amazing!
posted by supermedusa at 9:55 AM on June 29 [5 favorites]

Thanks for posting this great article.
posted by medusa at 9:59 AM on June 29

This makes number three in a beautiful trifecta of recent Metafilter posts about how this planet is full of life everywhere.
1: the atmosphere is full of living organisms, even 50 miles up.
2: life in the bedrock: a majority of the planet's microbes may live underground.
posted by Termite at 10:16 AM on June 29 [11 favorites]

posted by criticalyeast

eponysterical

(here's the article, ungated)
posted by chavenet at 10:25 AM on June 29 [3 favorites]

god this world is so weird and i love it
posted by skycrashesdown at 10:52 AM on June 29 [4 favorites]

Wikipedia, The Deep Biosphere
posted by LarryC at 11:13 AM on June 29 [2 favorites]

JBS Haldane, Possible Worlds (1927) "Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose . . ."
It's 30 years since a couple of my pals dunked a bucket into Galway Bay, took the contents back to their lab, concentrated the DNA with PCR, and found "a group of unusual Archaea, as yet uncultured, in the samples analysed". It was so exciting. And the window onto diversity in the biosphere hasn't gotten any duller in the years since.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:28 AM on June 29 [11 favorites]

I think here of the book Never home alone, by Rob Dunn, that I read recently, and that I find one of the best pop-science expositions I've ever read, which makes the points (1) as supermedusa reminds us, science is so flipping cool!; (2) as BobTheScientist reminds us, the barriers to genuinely new discoveries are so much lower than one might imagine, and so (3) citizen science, between, say, people who have access to labs that can do PCR and, well, everybody else, is good for everybody, both for ever so slowly chipping away at our ignorance, and for letting people better appreciate (1) by letting them be part of it.
posted by It is regrettable that at 12:15 PM on June 29 [2 favorites]

At first I thought "Dark Fungi" was the name of a new Star Wars villain.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:35 PM on June 29

Wikipedia, The Deep Biosphere

Turns out my butt is notable enough to get its own Wiki article.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:34 PM on June 29 [2 favorites]

Oh, the assininity!
posted by y2karl at 6:16 PM on June 29 [2 favorites]

Made me think of a Lackadaisy comic.
posted by AdamCSnider at 6:22 PM on June 29 [1 favorite]

From the Wikipedia article Deep biosphere:

”There is very little energy at greater depths, so metabolisms are up to a million times slower than at the surface. Cells may live for thousands of years before dividing and there is no known limit to their age.”

How slow can chemical processes be, and still be considered life?
posted by Termite at 10:47 PM on June 29 [2 favorites]

I love how life manages to exist and thrive in the wildest places, like inside tiny microscopic cavities inside hunks of minerals or rocks.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:48 PM on June 29 [1 favorite]