mold – The Artful Amoeba http://theartfulamoeba.com A blog about the weird wonderfulness of life on Earth Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:22:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.31 The Softer Side of Aspergillus http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/11/04/the-softer-side-of-aspergillus/ http://theartfulamoeba.com/2009/11/04/the-softer-side-of-aspergillus/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:01:17 +0000 http://frazer.northerncoloradogrotto.com/?p=1796 From the Department of More Cool Natural History Videos with Interesting Music, I give you the sexy CGI version of the fungus Aspergillus (ass-per-jill’-us) courtesy of some fine folks in Mother Russia. You may think of this fungus (if you think of it at all) as the scary black bane of your tupperware contents. But in reality, the graceful, proud forests of Aspergillus in your leftover gardens have a softer, more new age side (although they do seem to enjoy bashing into each other . . .)

Almost as exciting as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park! It’s only a matter of time until one of those hyphae (hi-fee, fungal filaments) figures out how to unscrew the lid on its moldy pickle jar. Actually, gratuitous spore bashing aside, this really is a fine animation. What you are seeing are Aspergillus conidiophores, or asexual spore-bearing stalks. As they grow up, spores grow in long chains at the swollen tip of the conidiophore. Although this animation’s depiction of multiplying conidia (asexual spores) isn’t quite right in the details (if you look carefully, some of those conidia literally appear out of thin air), it’s a worthy fakery job. You get the idea.

Aspergillus is a very common mold. Odds are its spores are floating around in the room you are sitting in right now, and this video amply demonstrates why. When I was at MIT, I did my thesis on the mold hysteria that gripped the U.S. about 10 years ago. I was flabbergasted by people who seemed to think any mold in the air was cause for panic. The opening line of my thesis was, “Living creatures float in every breath we take.” That is situation normal, and has been for several hundred million years. Though you are likely inhaling dozens or hundreds of fungal spores as you read this, healthy immune systems are more than equipped to handle it.

In college microbiology lab, Aspergillus was also one of the two fungi we examined in the 10 minutes we weren’t coaxing bacteria into pure culture (mostly) or playing with protists (rarely, unfortunately). If you have a microscope (you do, don’t you? Oh wait. I don’t either. Must work on that.), try scraping some mold off the nearest refrigerator-aged cheese and see if you luck into one of these. Even if not, you might be amazed by what you find. Wee animalcules aren’t the only thing worth gazing upon at 100X. Not by a longshot.

Conidia and conidiophore (fancy science-nerd name for asexual spores and the stalk that makes them) of Aspergillus fumigatus, courtesy CDC.
Conidia and conidiophore (fancy science-nerd name for asexual spores and the stalk that makes them) of Aspergillus fumigatus, courtesy CDC.

Fungi have an überweird classification scheme I will tell you about some other time, but suffice it to say it’s based on the sexual phases of fungi, and Aspergillus ain’t it. However, when the sexual forms are known for Aspergillus species (and they aren’t always!), they are placed in the Ascomycota, or sac-forming fungi, which I have discussed before. Here’s a tree.

Discovered courtesy MycoRant.

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