Sunday, October 15, 2023

The human-mushroom relationship (LAMS)

LAMS Meetup; Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Moriah, Wisdom Quarterly
Can you believe we descended from mushrooms? - We didn't. We have a common ancestor!
Dhamma Aboard Evolution
According to the Buddha, in the beginning of life on Earth, there was a kind of mushroom. It served as delicious nutriment. That was a very long time ago, when earthlings were in a kind of Golden Age, having descended from the stars and having begun to devolve. It was on account of karma (deeds), which itself was due to latent tendencies, that the environment and their bodies became coarser, shorter lived, and less radiant. We were devas in the beginning, enjoying sensuality so much that our bodies began to reflect that decline. History, mythology, metaphor? The long story of things on the human plane are contained in the Agganna Sutra. The millions or billions of years, the epochs and eons, this story goes back is astonishing because a mushroom was there, just as Paul Stamets (Fungi Perfecti) reveals in his talks.

Dr. David Bermudes, Ph.D. (CSUN)
REVIEW: Last night CSUN Prof. Dr. David Bermudes, Ph.D. (Boston U) talked about his doctoral research with Boston U Prof. Lynn Margulis, giving a college lecture with so much technical biology jargon and classifications that one could get lost in the mounds of data. But colorful overhead images made one thing clear: There's a fungal "tree of life," and we humans are on it. We have a common ancestor with Opisthokonts. Mycology, "the study of mushrooms," is a deep field that DNA sequencing has opened up for studies of the origins of life on earth.
LAMS General Meeting, October

Happy volunteer and mushroom lover
The Los Angeles Mycological Society (LAMS, lamushrooms.org) studies all things fungal, from mycelia (roots) to fruiting bodies (mushrooms) to bioremediation. Mushrooms will save the world.

LAMS is a non-profit group. Its purpose is to foster and expand understanding and appreciation of mycology ("the study of mushrooms and fungi"). LAMS creates and sponsors fun mushroom-related events and helps people learn about and identify mushrooms they find in the greater Los Angeles area. More information about LAMS events is available on the Calendar page.

LAMS hosts an annual Wild Mushroom Fair (at the Los Angeles Arboretum) and monthly meetings with speakers. This month:
  • Speaker: Dr. David Bermudes
  • Program: "What is a fungus? The Opisthokonta lineage and the last common ancestor of animals and fungi"
This question arises from discussions with other scientists, at different times and places, each taking a different view. The general question posed was, "Are chytrids true fungi?"

To explore this question, we look back at the lineage to which the fungi belong, which is the same as our human lineage.

There are old mushroom hunters, bold mushroom
hunters, but no "old-bold mushroom hunters."
The Opisthokonts ("hind poles") refers to our flagella. Since this means we as animals share a common ancestor with fungi, we will assemble a mosaic image of what that common ancestor might have been like.

We will start by tracing the symbiotic origin of the eukaryotic organelles, mitochondria, and plastids as part of our discussion on the eukaryotes that includes protists, fungi, and all animals.

Next fair is at the LA Arboretum
Slides include phylogenetic trees based on molecular data (DNA for proteins and rRNA) and images of fossil and/or putative fossil fungi.

More information about LAMS' events, including a biography of the speaker, is available on the LAMS Calendar page.

Directions to the community center are on the LAMS Locations page.
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