"Instead of evolving to produce poison, some distantly related fungi became toxic through a process called horizontal gene transfer, scientists say."
"Three mushrooms known as the destroying angel, the deadly dapperling and the funeral bell all have something in common: the fabulously lethal toxin alpha-Amanitin. If you eat one of these mushrooms, symptoms may not appear for several hours. But soon enough, the toxin begins wreaking havoc on your body’s ability to transcribe genes. By the fourth day or so after consumption, your liver and kidneys begin to fail. After about a week, you may well die.
This uncanny deadliness has a mystery at its core: These mushrooms are from three separate genuses, or groups of fungal species, that are not closely related. How did they come to make the exact same toxin?
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, scientists who have sequenced genomes of 15 species of mushrooms from these three groups make an intriguing claim: The genes to make alpha-Amanitin, rather than being inherited from a shared ancestor of these groups, were transferred to them directly from an unknown, probably extinct mushroom.
This kind of gene transfer, called horizontal gene transfer, is common among bacteria, said Hong Luo, a researcher at the Kunming Institute of Botany in China and an author of the new paper. Little snippets of DNA are passed from one microbe to another, then passed on to their offspring."
Veronique Greenwood reports for the New York Times May 9, 2022.
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