We have a of a confession here. We’ve always neglected fungi, that third mighty kingdom of life in favour of their more photogenic relatives, the animals and the plants. It’s a stupid oversight, as anyone who has enjoyed a glass of beer along with a bite of cheese can tell you. Not to mention Penicillium which was, after al the raison d’etre, the very fons et origio of these blogs which we so selflessly pen every day for your common benefit, gentle readers. Well now that’s all going to change. Fungi are on their way in from the cold starting with this intriguing piece from Emily Stern of the Daily Mail. Intriguing because it turns a bit of a baddie into a very Good Thing indeed.[1]
For many years researchers into old things like dead Pharaohs and dead Kings of Poland had a problem. A number of them kept dropping dead, due to the activities of a fungus called Aspergillus flavus[2] that lived in the shrouds and wrappings on the bodies of the extinguished rulers. Normally it performs a useful role in places like gardens and allotments by breaking down plant matter of all kinds. But get too close, breathe it in-and you could be a goner. So it has always been treated with a a wary circumspection. However, the ingenious Dr Sherry Gao and her co workers have discovered something else. Hidden inside the tissues of the meek mould are chemicals called asperigimycins. They seem to have anti leukaemia potentialities on their own: but, if combined with certain classes of lipid, they can get very good at it indeed. Read this from Emily’s matchless prose
They then added a lipid that’s also found in royal honey to another variant of asperigimycins and found the method killed just as many cancer cells as the drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin.
There’s a few lessons here for those who like a good moral tale. Firstly that Nature is full of hidden goodies about which we have no clue. Secondly even dangerous things can be turned to our advantage if you handle them with due care and caution(remember our old blog on Komodo dragons and antibiotics?) And thirdly, as in nature as in people: you never know which one is the one who saves your life. Treat them all with respect.And stop chopping down all the forests.
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspergillus
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